By Jove! Temple Of Jupiter At Baalbek
For the context, itinerary and links for this entire holiday, click here or the link below:
The fifth port of call was Beirut, in Lebanon. Our visit was just a few weeks before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, which must have put a stop to such touring for some while.
I returned to Lebanon, more than 20 years later, with Janie, with hilariously predictable results at Beirut airport:
I remember the coach journey from the Beirut port to Baalbek being a long and mostly tedious one. Dad took the street scene below twixt the two places.
Baalbek was nestled amongst some permanent refugee camps which I imagine might still be there – they were still there when we visited in 1997.
I remember being wowed by the ruined temples there – finding them in many ways more awe-inspiring than the Athens ruins, not least because they were less crowded and we were able to scramble around the ruins more comprehensively. That might well no longer be the case.
I was especially struck by the Temple of Bacchus, depicted below. I remember dad saying that Bacchus was his kinda Roman God. Hard to disagree now that I know a bit more about him.
There is just over a minute of cine, between 10’25” and 11’30”, until you start to see the invasion of light damage on the cine and the film jumps from Lebanon to Corfu, several days later. Dad lost almost a whole reel – I think the film got stuck in the camera at Crete and he had no changing bag with which to rescue the reel before most of it, including his Jerusalem footage, was destroyed.
Mum was very upset. I don’t think dad ever travelled without a changing bag again and I certainly never travelled without one…until digital photography came along.
Before the Civil War, then.