THE SUITCASE

After 8 days after Su’s Luggage went for a ride on a Holland America cruise ship...by accident.....it arrived in Beirut. But NOT the end of our story. Su called many times...how to retrieve....each time she got a call center in India, and a different solution. Most of the time she was put on hold...for an hour, or until she hung up.  We gathered all the info, and reference numbers and handed it over to our cousin Mansour. He finally got the straight story. Yes, the suitcase was at  Beirut, and Su had to show up in person, and prove identity and retrieve herself. Sounds easy enough. Noting is straightforward or easy in Lebanon. But UBER!  So we grabbed Mohamed and his sparking clean Uber car, and off Su and I went to retrieve said suitcase.  I would love to be loyal to Middle East airline,  because they are Lebanese...but they are NOT efficiency  or easy to deal with. We were shuffled back and forth to this office and that, and get an authorization, and many security checks.....for Su get 10,000 steps on her fit bit! All the while Mohammed was cooling his heels in the Uber car.  Finally! We had the bag, and we were hungry, tired, hot, and it was so anti climatic as Su was making do just fine after a week.
Arriving back at Taxi rates, not Uber rates...Mohammed made out...Su was so relieved she just shoved$$$ at him. The others had gone out for breakfast and after a brief rest we all hoofed it into town to pay for a Byblos tour coming up.... then we tried to find the hop on hope off big red bus that had just been introduced to Beirut. It was confusing and we had climbed stairs and walked all over...so we hailed a new cab and went to the check stand where we Knew they sold the tickets. We met a Chinese man from Toronto, and we all bought tickets and thought we would just hop on in about 5 min. What were we even thinking! This downtown  Beirut! An hour later....we saw the bus...it was already afternoon, and we were hungry and tired.
I can’t say it was a pleasant experience. We were basically STUCK in heavy traffic, and what’s the point. Snail crawl thru a noisy smoggy city watching people dodge cars and honk. Not my good time. We decided to get off after an hour and walk the waterfront and look for a restaurant that Julie saw in a guide book. Al Falamaki directly across from PigeonRock....classic and fun and bring on the wine! We really enjoyed the rest and replenishment of Lebanese food. After wine and yummy mezzanine and salads......we once again grabbed a taxi and went “home” where we sit on our little deck and watch Lebanese life in the party district. Always interesting.