Zora O'Neill's Blog, page 7

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #2: Ugly Places

Continuing my series of cranky travel tips, many of which have to do with how to plan your itinerary. This one’s related to Tip #1, but in the bigger picture.

Go to the ugly places.

I’ve argued this before, specifically about Cancun. But it has a broader application.

Any indie traveler worth his backpack shuns the place with concrete hotels, nor do most people go where there are zero landmarks. But you can learn a lot about a local culture in some random “ugly” city, more than you can at some remote beach where there’s exactly one local, who’s selling you weed and cooking your fish dinner however you like it. Cancun is very, very Mexican if you know where to look—and how to look at it.

Perfectly authentic Mexican sweets in supposedly soulless Cancun.

Another example: Pattaya, in Thailand, universally reviled as ground zero for whoring. But to quote a guy I met in Bangkok: “It was great! There were Indian package tourists, and they were posing for photos with trannies on the beach!”

C’mon! How is that not heartwarming? I’m not saying you should go for a week, but one night can be fun. The nice thing about ugly, over-touristed places is that you can gawp all you want–at prostitutes, at sunburned Brits in gold chains, at whatever.

The same logic applies to under-touristed spots with no major attractions. This summer, Peter and I took an exceptionally great trip to Thrace, the eastern fringe of Greece. According to guidebooks, and even most Greeks, there’s “nothing there.” That means no ancient Greek ruins–but there are very interesting Greek-Turkish towns and more recent history. One town–New Orestiada–is definitely un-charming: it looks like a midsize Midwestern town, with uglier apartment blocks. It was built from scratch on a grid system, and the very reason it’s that way is what makes it interesting.

Greece like you've never seen it before: New Orestiada.

Even if you don’t buy my argument, you should thank me. Every time I get held up in some ugly place, gawking and eating and laughing, I’m not making it to that pristine, off-the-radar beach. I’m one less person ruining the fringes. And the world could use a little more of that.

Counterintuitive Travel Tip #1: The Bad Part of Town

Guidebook writing has been my bread and butter for a decade, but a lot of what I’ve learned about how to travel–how to ensure a good trip, or salvage a seemingly bad one–has no place in a guide.

This is my collected wisdom (or at least the contrarian part of it). It’s looking like I’ve got about eight of these bad boys for you. Enjoy–and travel well!

Go to the bad part of town.

Right, you don’t want to get pistol-whipped in some ghetto in Caracas. But in most parts of the world, the neighborhood your guidebook warns you against is actually not terribly crime-ridden, and it’s the most interesting part.

Rich parts of cities all look the same—Gucci and Vuitton and ladies-who-lunch. Hipsterized areas, with their Edison bulbs and wood paneling and handmade this-and-that, are a little better, but still suffer a bit of sameness.

Bad parts are where the variations really come in. Who are the immigrants to this city? Do people drink in the middle of the day? What’s that song blaring from all the corner stores? Are the nice things a culture says about itself still true?

The mean streets of the Bijlmer, southern fringes of Amsterdam.

“Bad” is relative, of course. Amsterdam’s “bad” part—the Bijlmer—is absurdly nice, a ghastly Le Corbusier-inspired mini-city that’s been rehabbed. Its history reveals some inconsistencies with the Dutch regard for tolerance, but it also shows the practical, problem-solving side of the culture.

Cairo’s “bad” neighborhood of Shubra is just very shabby—but not terribly dangerous. The threatening-sounding City of the Dead is really a surprisingly mellow place, with un-dead stuff like a post office and power lines.

If you’re worried about crime, take the relative view. If you’re an American reading this, you probably already deal with crime rates the rest of the world thinks are intolerable. And you’re less likely to be a victim of touristy crime (pickpocketing, scams, etc) if you go where the tourists aren’t.

“Not to get into salt-of-the-earth cliches,” Peter chimes in, “but you meet nicer people in middle-class and poor areas.” And the point of travel is to meet people, right?

Sugar Duck! (Or: Best Souvenir Ever)

Our best souvenir of Turkey was not a rug, a set of tea cups or some blue evil-eye charm.

It was the newest member of our happy household, this sweet little guy:

Well, hello there!

We’ve named him Sugar Duck.

This is why:

Hellllooooo!

See, we had dinner at a cheapie restaurant in Edirne where they had the red chili in these nifty flip-top caddies on the table: glass bottom, bright-green flip-top dome.

A couple days later, in Istanbul, we nipped (I was going to say ‘ducked’) into a restaurant-supply place just as it was closing, and they had the exact same form as the Edirne model, but in three colors…and with adorable eyes!

And labeled, in Turkish and English, sugar duck.

As Peter points out, we probably wouldn’t love him half as much if we didn’t know this adorable name. Heck, we probably wouldn’t even have put sugar in him.

Best of all, he’s made in Turkey.

Peter’s first thought was, Oh, we’ll use a better spoon. But then he appreciated just how flawlessly designed the Sugar Duck was. The spoon is his tongue, you see.

Yeth, it ith my tongue. Why are you laughing?

The only down side of our new Turkish pet: We definitely use more sugar than we used to.

Summer Break #4: Greece and Turkey: Best Bites

File all this under Things I Wish I’d Eaten More Of.

1. Fresh mizithra

We drove to the next little town to visit the place that makes the killer sheep’s-milk yogurt, with its nice crusty top.

I’ve read rapturous descriptions of fresh ricotta, but I didn’t really believe it until they fed us the mizithra, scooped fresh out of the vat and still warm.

Happy little clouds

Mizithra is, in this form, basically ricotta. It’s also made from the whey from a sturdier cheese (in this case, feta), so it’s soft and jiggly, not too intense.

Having it warm is like eating little dairy clouds–but not so ethereal. More primal. I think people might love it so much because it reminds them of nursing?

2. Ladotiri

Same bat place, same bat channel. Same ‘Oh, now I understand!’ moment.

Why didn't I eat that last chunk?!

Ladotiri is literally ‘oil cheese.’ It’s a specialty of Lesvos, cured in olive oil. It’s normally kind of rubbery and salty and doesn’t seem particularly interesting.

This stuff, though, fresh–ah-ha. It was nutty, like gruyere. A tiny bit grainy, mostly smooth.

3. Ouzo

OK, actually, this was more of a visual thing than a taste thing. They make a lot of ouzo–most of the ouzo–on Lesvos. It’s great. I don’t drink all that much these days, but I always wish I’d drunk more ouzo so I could look at the bottles.

Ouzo Mini, which may be the best ouzo of Lesvos, is also conveniently the cutest. It has a hip new label:

The modern Mini girl

And Ouzo Matis, another brand with babes on the label…well, they cut right to the chase. We’re not sure if this is new, or we only just noticed, but here’s Peter noticing:

Can you find the boobs in this photo?

What’s he noticing? Va-va-voom!

Waiter, another ice cube, please!

OK, so the photo is not the greatest. But yes, peer dreamily through your ouzo bottle, and you’ll see a girl in a red bikini (or blue, should you choose) on the inside.

3. Obscenely ripe fruit

Waiting for the early train in Soufli, we breakfasted on figs from in front of the stationmaster’s house. You know how everyone leers about figs? How they’re vaguely dirty-looking?

Dirty, dirty, dirty

These weren’t even purple on the outside, and they were the dirtiest figs I’ve ever eaten.

Then, in Turkey, a nice old man gave me a tomato. It was hot from the sun. He smiled and kept walking. I cupped that tomato in my hand the whole rest of our walk–it felt like one of my own organs.

We ate it the next morning for breakfast, gulped over the sink.

Tomato porn

Maybe the best tomato of my life? Almost all goo, perfect acid-sweet balance. No need for salt at all.

Days later, Peter said, “Agh! Why didn’t we save the seeds?!”

4. Hot sausage

No innuendo intended.

We were in Komotini, our first real stop after Eressos. Whole new part of Greece. The town is 50 percent Turkish, complete with a mosque and an Ottoman-era cemetery.

The streets were empty, which was partly due to Ramadan, and partly due to it being 108 degrees. One restaurant in the market was open, and fed us this:

There was a lot more when the plate first came.

We marveled at the sensation of hot chili in our throats. The Greeks aren’t so into spicy-hot, and we hadn’t tasted it for weeks. The sausage was spiced like basturma, which is to say, intensely, with coriander and pepper and more. It was a mix of beef and lamb. It was superb.

5. Turkish ice cream

I love Mado ice cream. To Turks, it’s probably only as exciting as Haagen-Dazs, but to me, it’s the most fantastic ice-cream brand, the height of luxury. It’s all goat’s-milk, and the fruit flavors (which I think are fruit-only, no dairy, but who knows?) are so intense, it feels like the fruit is communicating directly with your brain, bypassing your tongue entirely.

In Edirne, we sat at the Mado cafe and had ridiculous Mado treats. Just for Peter, it seems, they have the ‘Red Fruits Passion’ (or some such) sundae on the menu. Sour cherry, raspberry and strawberry, plus raspberry goo, and some clotted cream for good measure.

Madondurmadondurmadondurmado

I had a nice orange-creamsicle-ish thing with pistachios, but whatever. Need more red fruits, please.

6. Hazelnut meringue

Sorry, no photo. I bought it on the Istanbul ferry, along with my tulip-glass of tea.

I know from flying Turkish Airlines, which is neck-and-neck with Emirates for the best-food-in-coach prize, that Turkey produces like most of the world’s hazelnuts. They call it a miracle nut, and serve it instead of peanuts.

So I grabbed a hazelnut meringue cookie, and it must have been 99% hazelnuts, because it was more like an energy bar than a meringue or any cookie, really. So intense.

But then again, everything tastes more intense when you’re traveling. But then again again, America is the Land of Bland. These tastes will tide me over till my next adventure.

Summer Break #3: Does Turkey Produce the World’s Weirdest Drink?

Want a real mind-bending experience when you travel?

Don’t worry so much about what to eat. Focus on the odd things there are to drink.

That’s where you get into severe mind-warping territory.

Exhibit A: Salgam Suyu

(Sorry–there’s a little cedilla under the s, and also under a c farther down. I’ve taught myself a lot about code in a decade, but never mastered those special characters.)

Salgam suyu is a Turkish purple carrot drink. Apparently it’s fairly common at juice stands in certain parts of Turkey that I haven’t been to.

I think if I encountered it in a juice stand, I’d be pretty giddy and think it was cool.

But I saw it as a packaged product, in a grocery store–and that was even more mind-blowing. It’s like it proved it was a major part of the culture, not just some health nut’s invention.

Looking innocent on the grocery store shelf

“Is that a…carrot? That’s purple?” I said, squinting at the label. I flipped it around to look at the ingredients. Yup, purple carrot.

At the checkout, the lady looked unimpressed with it, like it was a totally normal thing. I guess, for her, it is. Which is the mind-blowing part.

It’s really beautiful stuff:

Looking lurid out on the street

By now, you’re probably wondering about the taste. The label said in capital letters BEST SERVED COLD.

But we had no fridge. We popped it open near the end of a long walk, standing on the top of a windy dyke at the edge of Edirne, with the massive Sinan mosque on the hill above us.

Peter gulped as I read out the ingredients: “Purple carrot, wheat, turnip, salt, red chili, pepper…”

“Huh. All those things really come through,” he said, scrunching up his face. “In that order.”

I took a swig. It was bracing. I wished it were cold. But for electrolyte replacement or whatever, and in lieu of food, it was pretty fantastic.

This product really made me rethink everything I knew about Turkey, Turkish food and Turks in general. Granted, I’m no expert to start with (the only Turkish I know is cok güzel, and I learned that from an Eartha Kitt song), but this made me realize there’s just so much I don’t know, there and nearly everywhere I go.

Like, what is the significance of this drink? Do grownups drink it? Do kids drink it? Does your mom tell you to drink it when you’re sick with something in particular? Do dudes drink it to feel studlier? Does it go with certain foods? Do you drink at night? In the morning? Is it old-fashioned? Or suddenly cool again? Is this a good brand? The only brand? Do people scoff at seeing it packaged at all?

I have no real answers, but I do see the word afrodizyak on the packager’s website. And, according to the ad, it makes you do backflips.

Each dish in every culture has all this resonance, but we barely begin to learn any of it when we travel. We can read up on some of the most famous dishes–it’s bachelor food, it’s court food, it’s imported-from-China-on-the-silk-road food… But a lot is just never even discussed, until someone thinks to ask.

It’s true for food, but it’s doubly true for drinks, because they’re almost always, by definition, a secondary thing.

Drinks also tend to be more personal, like breakfast–we have our routines, and we don’t want to mess them up (just think of your morning coffee).

And, more practically, travelers often shy away from water-based things for health reasons.

But one huge selling point about trying new drinks is: they’re cheap! Even if something’s disgusting and you’ll never put it in your mouth again, you only spent a couple bucks, max, on it. But you will have seen, for a gulp or two, a whole side of a culture you never knew before.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to drink in another country?

Summer Break #2: Chicken of the Sea, Greek-Stylie

Peter and I were ambling down the boardwalk in Eressos, on some half-baked errand or other, when we saw…a bloodbath. Flashing knives. Bright-red gore.

At first, I thought Costa was butchering a sheep, right there on a restaurant table.

We got closer and saw that the carcass was, in fact, a tuna.

I’ve seen guys cutting up tunas at Hunts Point fish market in the Bronx, but that was a pretty tidy operation. This was a sloppier affair.

Just working on lunch

Costa had bought the whole fish directly from a random fisherman who’d caught it not far offshore. The guy was someone from another island, Costa said, where they’re experts at catching very big fish. (On Lesvos, they’re masters of sardines.)

He'd used a very, very big hook.

Costa had hired the strolling vendor, a Bangladeshi guy who normally walked along the beach, to help him cut it up. He’d put aside his stack of cheap fedoras and board of sunglasses, and was now up to his wrists in tuna meat. He looked pretty pleased.

An older woman was there collecting the scraps for her cat. “Do I need to cook it first?” she asked.

Costa laughed, in his husky way, through his beard. “No!” he declared, and sliced two chunks off the loins he was slicing up. He thrust them at us, to demonstrate.

When you look up 'raw' in the dictionary, this picture is there.

I’d like to say it was the most transcendant sushi ever, but it was almost too intense. Gamey. It reminded me a little of the whale we ate in Norway a decade ago, like they were from the same murky depths. Serious stuff–it tasted like you could live off one scrap for a week. But a cat would be delighted.

The crime scene

Check out those yellow bits in the photo above. Yup: yellowfin tuna. It never occurred to me that those words, which I’ve read only on can labels, meant something concrete, in real life. Somewhere out there in the sea is a fish with little blue bits on his fins too.

We left Costa to clean up. Remarkably, everyone else at the restaurant was placidly enjoying their lunches, not batting an eye. If they’d been butchering a sheep, of course, the tourists at least would’ve run off screaming. Why are fish so different?

Do they not bleed?

We returned that night. Two kilos of tuna, for our party of 12–we barely made a dent in the full 55 kilos the fish had weighed when hooked.

Grilled. Squeeze of lemon. Salt. Pepper. Cooked all the way through–none of that Asian-seared business.

It was perhaps the most amazing fish I’ve ever eaten. With heat, the gaminess dissipated. The fat oozed through the meat, which flaked.

I saw exactly what all that canned tuna was meant to be. And it sure ain’t chicken.

RG in Real Time

Astute blog observers may realize I’m writing about things that happened a bit in the past, which may in turn make you suspect I’m off on another, better adventure. You’re right!

If you want to know what I’m doing minute by minute (oh, so breathless!) right now in Morocco, go ‘like’ Roving Gastronome on Facebook and/or follow me on Twitter.

(Spoiler alert: I am not embroiled in street protests against YouTube videos.)

Summer Break #1: Name That Fruit! (A Mediterranean Mystery)

Help me out here, Internet. I’m trying to identify a mystery fruit. Or maybe fruits.

There are three stories to tell:

Incident #1: Lebanon

A nice Druze woman on a bus in the Chouf mountains in Lebanon told me her favorite fruit was Persian aprict–mishmish ajami. She said it stayed green, and was both sweet and sour, and was not very fuzzy.

Sadly, I was scheduled to leave Lebanon just a couple of days later, and had no time to look for this fantastic fruit.

In lieu of a picture of that fruit, or of that woman, here at least is a nice photo of Peter with a Druze man.

Peter's Photo Pro Tips: Always compliment a man on his mustache.

Incident #2: Greece

After the fantastic ladies at our favorite restaurant in Eressos showed us how to make Easter lamb, they pointed to a crate of fruit and told us to help ourselves.

They called the fruit milorodaxino–literally, “apple peach.” From far away, all piled in the crate, the fruit did look like kind of crappy little Golden Delicious apples. Up close, though…best nectarine ever:

The mystery apple peach

And, as you can see, green all the way through.

Was this the phantom Persian apricot, by another name? The farmer who grew the fruit was there outside the restaurant, all burly forearms like Popeye and a mustache to beat the band. He was the only one that grew this fruit, he said. End of story.

Incident #3: Astoria, New York

When we returned to NYC, one of the 24-hour produce stores (yes, we have more than one) had these “honeydew nectarines” in stock:

Honeydew Nectarines

They looked the same, but they were kinda crappy–a little mealy, not intense flavor. The woman who runs the store admitted they were not at their best. It was hard to tell whether it was not the same fruit at all, or just a typically poor American rendition of it.

And because she’s Greek, Peter asked her if she knew if these were the same as the milorodaxino. No, no, she said–those are part apple, and these were part melon.

Er, I think she’s wrong on both counts, because that would be like serious fruit miscegenation, so unfortunately I have to discount her as an unreliable source. But I appreciate that she makes an effort to source new and interesting fruits and veg–we also got these neat bulbous cucumbers from her, and some great liver-colored heirloom tomatoes.

Second data point: After writing all this, I flipped over an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated, and it had an illustration of peaches and nectarines. The Honeydew variety was on there. The issue was from 2002–so this isn’t a new strain.

Further data point: Turkey

Check out these marzipan fruits in a storefront in Istanbul. A couple of them look like they could be the mysterious fruit.

Check out the top row, next to the "kivi"

Ala elma = “ala apple” according to Google translate, which is maybe just the variety name of an apple, like Gala?

Or this one:

Check out the greenish things...

Papaz erik = “pastor plum”

Obviously, the fact that these were rendered in marzipan makes it especially difficult. In retrospect, Peter and I should’ve gone to the adjacent market and looked for the real-fruit equivalents, instead of getting distracted by an antiques store.

So gardeners, travelers, botanists, Lebanese fruit-lovers: tell me what you know. Have you eaten any of these things? Are they all the same? Are they different?

Bottom line, really, is: Did I miss the Best Fruit Ever by not getting those mishmish ajami in Lebanon in the first place?

(If you like stories about cross-cultural plant identification, also check out my old story about purslane[PDF]. That one took years to solve. Now that the internet is more full of information, I expect to solve this question in minutes. Right? Hello? Anyone?)

Queens Writers Fellowship: Fall 2012

Are you a writer in New York City? Even better, are you a writer in western Queens?

I’d love to host you at my house, for the Fall 2012 Queens Writers Fellowship.



The QWF is really just a grand-sounding strategy for making sure we both get some serious writing done. Like having a workout partner at the gym–but without all that tedious sweating.

I have a big, sunny office with a spare desk. With a talented, diligent guest, it’s much, much easier to buckle down and slip into the writing flow.

The office...wide view

The terms

I would like to host one committed writing fellow to visit at least three days a week (though four would be even better), October 17 through December 14, 2012.

I will be finishing a draft of my book. You can be working on whatever you feel you need to get done–but the bigger, the better.

Need to make phone calls? You’re totally welcome, downstairs. We have a land line.

We stock good coffee, and there’s usually some lunch around.

There's even a rocking chair!

The Winslow Place Home for Wayward Writers, as I like to call it, is in central Astoria, two short blocks from the subway. If you happen to live in a neighborhood with crappy groceries, it’s worth coming to work here because you can do your shopping errands as well (fresh produce, 24 hours a day!).

How to apply

Send me an email introducing yourself, and tell me what you’re working on in general, and what you plan to use the fellowship for.

Preference is given to people who live nearby–I always like to meet new Queens-dwellers–and to big projects you might otherwise not have a chance to focus on.

Even if you feel like you don’t quite fit the bill, drop me a note. I’m always interested in meeting neighbors and fellow freelancers–and even if the QWF isn’t for you this time, it may be in the future, and I’ll keep you in the loop.

Deadline is September 31.

Your desk awaits...

Read more about the QWF here.

Summer Break #0.5: Lebanon Mountain Trail

I’m back from an internet vacation, and filing the next rash of posts under “Summer Break.” First, I was in Lebanon. I know it doesn’t look like work, but trust me, I’m writing a book! Later, we went to Greece and Turkey, where I wrote for a bit, and traipsed for a bit. More on that later.

Near the end of my six-week stint in Lebanon, Peter and I planned to hike a few legs of the Lebanon Mountain Trail, a 260-mile north-south route through about two-thirds of the country.

The LMT organization publishes a trail guide, with descriptions of the route (I picked this up in a Beirut bookshop) as well as a series of topo maps for every leg (these I had to buy direct from the LMT). They provide a list of guesthouses and campsites and guides along the route. It’s really very suavely packaged, and inspires confidence.

...the confidence you need to tackle very steep inclines. (All photos courtesy of Peter.)

But then there’s a line in the trail guide, last on a list of bullet points, after the one telling you it’s a good idea to hire a guide: “We’ve walked this trail a lot, and there haven’t been any land mines, but off the trail…well…”

Actually, that’s  paraphrasing, because I left my trail guide in Beirut. But you get the idea. I sure got the idea. But I chose to squash down the fear of losing my limbs and carry on. Squash, squash, squash.

Because Lebanon is crawling with hikers, all able-bodied, I figured the law of averages was on our side. But I figured it would be better to stick to better-traveled sections of trail. (Why didn’t we just hire a guide? you might ask. Well, Peter and I are skilled outdoorspeople who can read topo maps and a compass. But really: We’re introverts and really didn’t feel like chitchatting with a guide all day long.)

I also wanted the start and end points to be places that could be reached by public transport. But I wasn’t so self-sufficient that I wanted to carry camping gear.

The only section that satisfies all these needs–well-marked trail; guesthouses every night; accessible by bus–is legs 19, 20 and 21, between Barouk and Jezzine. A lot of it runs through the Chouf Cedar Reserve, for which there are additional, more current maps available (I picked these up at Antoine in Beirut). This gave me greater confidence in our decision not to hire a guide.

In fact, I got so cocky, I decided we should hike south to north, against the flow of the LMT guide, which describes the route north to south. This turned out to be the least of our worries.

Goats saying, "None shall pass!" on the other hand...that was a serious worry.

If you’re considering this hike, here are some details to know:

Hiking south to north is fine. The trail guide is not so detailed that it’s hard to follow the other way. And there were several points on the route (especially hiking down from the Prophet Ayoub shrine to Niha) where we were glad we were going the opposite direction.
On leg 21, hiking northbound, once you pass the mountain fort, be sure to stock up on water at the spring. Springs marked on the map farther along the trail were not actually springs–or we couldn’t find them. While you’re filling up your water bottles, consult your two maps–the LMT’s and the Chouf Reserve’s. See where they differ, and follow the Chouf Reserve’s. The LMT directs you through a canyon that is overgrown, and we couldn’t find the trail, and had to backtrack, cursing all the way.
The guesthouse in Niha is great. The owner lost his hands to land mines. It’s unsettling, especially if you get lost on the way there. He also works in the reserve cabin by the mountain fort, which you’ll pass on the way from Jezzine. This is convenient, if you’ve neglected to make reservations.

Breakfast at the guesthouse in Niha

From the Prophet Ayoub shrine down to Niha, there is indeed a trail, as the map suggests, though it’s not well marked at the top, and if you ask anyone, they’ll probably tell you it’s not there. It’s not super well maintained. But it is passable. Just head down through the picnic grounds and keep an eye out for trail blazes.
Leaving Niha and heading north, the maps are contradictory, and the trail description isn’t clear. If you head back to where the shrine trail dumped you the day before, don’t cross the river, and at the first opportunity, scramble uphill a short distance to get to a trail running along the irrigation ditch you can see just up the hillside. Leave early in the day–once the trail heads uphill again, away from the irrigation ditch, it’s pretty grueling.
We got lost in the last stretch before Maasser ech-Chouf, after Khraibe (I think–or was it Mristi?). But we didn’t even realize it, so, hooray, no land-mine anxiety. We had convinced ourselves we were following trail blazes, but later realized they were no-trespassing or private-property symbols. The route we went wasn’t terrible, as it’s mostly through fields, and nothing overgrown. There’s another agricultural road a man in Khraibe told us about, that goes from near the gas station on the far, far edge of town. Who knows where the real trail is. (Oh, yeah–a professional guide does.)

Terraced fields outside of Jezzine

The guesthouse in Maasser ech-Chouf is really lovely. The man who runs the shop and restaurant on the plaza is a smooth operator, and he’ll bring you more food than you order, and charge you for it all. But it’s good food, and it’s not expensive, and he’ll probably throw in invigorating herbal concoctions and coffee and sweets and funny hats to wear. Just think of it more as an all-you-can-eat-for-$15 place, rather than an a la carte restaurant.
The trail north out of Maasser ech-Chouf (ie, south end of leg 19) is…I don’t know. Let’s just say not well marked. This is the one point where we definitely would’ve been happier with a guide. But we were so bent on leaving early that we didn’t want for the guide to get into the office. We wound up scrabbling up a really steep mountainside and flopping out on the road, and having to hitch a ride to the Cedar Reserve entrance. It wasn’t pretty. But at least they don’t put land mines on really steep hills, I don’t think.

Peter's battle wounds from clambering up the hill. Also: holes in both our pants.

There are no springs between Maasser ech-Chouf and Barouk. But the trail, after the uphill out of Maasser, isn’t strenous, and partially shaded. Plan accordingly.
There are 800 vicious varieties of thistles in Lebanon. Plan accordingly, with very thick socks or long pants.
The guesthouse in Barouk needs to be booked at least two days in advance, said the owner on the phone, and it was so empty we were suspicious it’s ever open. Humph. But then we hopped a bus to Beiteddine, and walked to Deir al-Qamar, and finally found a hotel that wasn’t exorbitant. (But, it should be said, the owner was a bit appalled at our sweaty appearance–out of context of the hiking trail, we did look like filthy vagrants, by Lebanese uber-grooming standards. Keep this in mind if you plan extensive backpacking.)

Have I mentioned land mines too much and scared you? I’m sorry–that shouldn’t have happened.

Just focus on the idyllic parts...which were pretty idyllic.

I loved hiking in Lebanon–we met nice people and saw millennia-old trees. I’d go back and do it again–I’d love to do some of the more northern legs especially. The Chouf is interesting terrain, and a nice mix of wild territory and farms.

And the efforts of the Lebanon Mountain Trail crew are admirable–it’s an excellent project, and I hope to take part in it again soon.