Ghosts of Beirut

Holiday Inn. And, sadly, not the Christmas-time classic movie. While in Beirut I stayed right around the corner from the iconic Holiday Inn, made famous/infamous during the dark days of the civil war. It was just about completed but never occupied, and it became a favorite location for snipers (as you can tell from the bullet and rocket holes). Many building around it (including a shiny new building which almost touches it, which you can see on the right in the last picture) have been rebuilt/rehabbed, but the Holiday Inn itself remains untouched.

Its only inhabitants today are soldiers and tanks. It seems that they intend to leave it as a sad reminder of a horrible time in Lebanon's past. I got pretty close and busily snapped away with my camera, and finally one of the soldiers, politely, told me not to take any more. I apologized and he just waved me along. There was much less of a military presence inside the city that I thought there might be, just the occasional small grouping of soldiers on key street corners or above sharp bends in the road.

At no point did I feel in danger, except when the taxi drivers were taking me somewhere at breakneck speed (but that's another story).