Beirut Travel Guide and Places to Visit in Beirut

Beirut Travel Guide and Places to Visit in Beirut

Beirut travel guide, Ibn Khaldun said ‘geography is destiny’. I think this is the sentence that expresses the inequality in the world in the most meaningful way for us…for example, the Middle East!

Middle East was an unknown journey for us…until we went to Jordan 4 months ago. We were very impressed with Jordan and we saw that the ‘voice of the East’ was not always and everywhere scary. At the same time, the East is fascinating, breathtaking and instructive, as long as we know how to listen..!

We wanted to go to this geography again on our return from Jordan, and this time the target was Beirut… We have to admit that while we were waiting for a rather sad and more closed city, we came across a city that lived until the morning! It is a beautiful city that lives in spite of the bad days they have had, and that lives in spite of their fear that ‘a war will come one day’.. Along with the disorder that comes from the glory of the Middle East, of course… Honestly, this is the city of contrasts! But it’s such a contrast that it makes your head spin.. You take a step towards wealth, you take another step, and there is terrible poverty all around you.. You meet another face of Beirut at every step and you soon get used to this contrast and embrace the city.

Beirut Travel Guide

How to get to Beirut in our Beirut Travel Guide, stay in Beirut , How many days to visit Beirut, Is Beirut safe, When to go to Beirut, Is Beirut expensive We talked in detail about strong>, Food & Drink in Beirut and places to visit in Beirut. Here is our Beirut travel guide!

Before going to Beirut; Is Beirut safe?

The first question that may come to your mind before coming to Beirut will be ‘Security in Beirut‘ and you ask yourself Is Beirut safe. We were really curious about the answer, since we will go on this trip with our mothers unlike usual.. More precisely, as a tourist in Lebanon, the places where you will fall are quite safe..

As a tourist, it is not a city that will make you nervous while visiting, unless you say, “I will photograph Beirut’s ghettos”, if you visit the recommended places of the city and if you are a good smurf. In fact, the city center is so lively that you walk around saying ‘what a happiness’ and there is not even a single deserted place..! ☺ We did not encounter any difficulties in Beirut and in Byblos, which we went on a day trip from Beirut.. But as we said, we did not go far from the centers and we were more or less always in touristic places.. We hope your experience will be as positive as ours..

Let’s come to the ‘Transport to Beirut‘ part.

Does Beirut Require a Visa?

The best part of reaching Beirut is visa-free to be. Beirut does not require a visa from Turkish citizens and you can enter the country with a piece of paper that you fill in upon landing.. You can stay up to 90 days with the stamp on your passport at the entrance.. So there is nothing extra you need to do when coming to Beirut.. Let’s just say, there is nothing you should do, but there is one thing you should not do… No Israeli stamp in your passport. Those who have gone to Israel with their current passport and have an Israeli stamp in their passport are not allowed to be taken to Beirut.. Beware of!

Getting to and Getting to Beirut

Getting to Beirut Coming back to how to get there, it’s actually pretty easy! It takes about 2 hours from Istanbul and both Pegasus and THY have flights every day.. The rest is left to find suitable flight tickets.. Even when we were looking for a flight ticket from Munich to Beirut, the most suitable option seemed to be to go via Istanbul with Pegasus.. If you come across campaign periods, you can find a flight ticket with Pegasus for an average of 120 USD for a round trip from Istanbul to Beirut.. Other airlines may be going as well, but Pegasus always seems to be the most suitable one in this destination.

Beirut City Transportation

Inner city transportation in Beirut is quite simple in our opinion; with Uber. Public transport in Beirut is very, very limited and if you go to places you want to go as a tourist, instead of using public transport, you save yourself a lot of trouble.. Why do you say Uber; because regular taxis are expensive and they try to increase the price as soon as they realize that you are a tourist, in Uber, you see how much it will cost when you call Uber.. Since we got off the airport, we used Uber constantly and we paid 11 USD from the airport to the city center, and 4-5 USD at the most from one place to another in the city.. There is wi-fi at the airport, but it’s only valid for 30 minutes, so you’d better get connected as soon as you call for an Uber.. ☺

Buying Sim Cards in Beirut and Internet in Beirut

Speaking of calling Uber, of course you will always need internet to call Uber. Before we went, we had read that Beirut was extremely expensive and sim cards were around 40 Usd on average, but we were able to find sim card + internet for 19 Usd while we were visiting Hamra.. It didn’t cost too much… You only need your passport with you when you take the line, and they can ask a number of security questions up to your father’s name.. In these moments, you realize that you are in the Middle East.

Is Beirut Expensive and what is the Currency of Beirut?

As an objective blog, we should say that; yes Beirut is an expensive city. More precisely, Beirut is a city in which the extremely rich and the extremely poor live, the middle section is almost absent, and life is designed for the extremely rich.. So it’s pretty expensive. For example, Beirut food and drink and Beirut accommodation in the setting of an expensive European city, such as Munich.

However, like every big city, Beirut has food and beverage options where you can escape from the expensiveness, convenient/nice hotels where you can stay, and activities you can do for free.. Let’s say that Beirut’s expensive does not scare you, with a little research you can save suitable places to eat and drink, you can stay at a reasonable price as long as you don’t leave it to the last minute.. With the comfort of having studied and gone to our school, we always ate very good meals in very beautiful places, and we were torn from the expensiveness of Beirut! One of our suggestions is of course to take a look at the menu before sitting in a place.

Lebanese Currency

Lebanon’s own currency is the Lebanese Pound but the USD is also used everywhere. While paying the account somewhere, they write the account separately in these two currencies.. If you take USD with you to Beirut, you may not even need to convert it, we did it..

Beirut Travel Guide: Beirut Accommodation

We wouldn’t be able to talk about Beirut accommodation in a Beirut Travel Guide.

We were stuck between two touristic places when choosing a hotel for Beirut. We would either stay in the old city area, ‘Hamra‘, which is a very old Beirut where mostly locals live, or in the center of the ‘new’ Beirut, that is, in the most modern area.. We chose Hamra and we were very satisfied.. A bit of chaos at first turns your head, but then once you get in, you get used to it! Think of Hamra as the Sultanahmet of 10 years ago, it is lively and exciting 24/7! It’s also pretty safe.

As for the hotel proposal in Hamra; we stayed at Bella Riva Hotel which is very centrally located and we recommend it with our eyes closed! It was the best hotel we could find in terms of price and performance. We paid 200 USD per room including breakfast for 4 nights.. We also left the link. If you are looking for an alternative, you can also look at The J Hotel Spa in the Hamra area.. This was the second most recommended hotel to us in the Hamra region.. If neither of these or there is no room, we recommend Grand Hotel Beirut. All three have similar prices and are very, very good compared to the quality of the hotels..

If you want to stay in the new city center of Beirut instead of Hamra, the most recommended hotel to us was ‘Markazia Suites‘.. Everyone who went was overjoyed.. Hotel prices here are a bit more expensive than in the Hamra region, but we can say that it is more luxurious.. If you want one more luxury to be mine, you can look at ‘Saifi Suites‘.

If you want to stay in Airbnb, let’s leave a link like this. If you become a member of Airbnb with this link, you will earn a credit of 130 TL valid on your first stay, and as you continue to use Airbnb, Airbnb may start to like you more and load surprise credits to your account.

Since we have taken care of accommodation, next places to visit There are!

Places to Visit in Beirut

Beirut Travel Guide and Places to Visit

Hamra

Beirut travel guide The district that made Beirut to Beirut became Hamra for us.. Hamra is a neighborhood that lives as if it were in the 80s, despite Beirut’s over-modernized other face.. Bustling and lively, full of small shops, local eating and drinking places and stalls selling junk!

If, like us, you start your tour of Beirut from here and then move on to modern regions, you may be stunned at first.. But don’t forget to wander around Hamra for at least a few hours and eat falafel at Barbarian. (We will come to the food and beverage part in Beirut separately)

Gemmayzah

Another place that must not be included in a Beirut Travel Guide; gemmayzah. Gemmayzah The young face of Beirut. We can say that it is the most touristic area of ​​Beirut, where all kinds of local and foreign young people hang out, full of third wave coffee shops and international cuisine restaurants and exhibitions.. Of course, the contrast of Beirut finds you here too.. For example, you see a state-of-the-art coffee shop, everything inside is a design product, the coffee is finely ground, while the building next to it is falling into disrepair.. There are even traces of lead on it. Then you look at the building right next to it, the sushi-ci, the most luxurious and expensive one..! Such a strange contrast, you’re dizzy, but you love it. ☺

Mar Mikhael

The Mar Mikhael district starts right at the end of Gemmayzah Street. If we say that we should make this place look like a place, it would be Tarlabaşı of the 90’s… This was an Armenian quarter at the time, but later transformed like the ghettos of Berlin. Actually, we love such places and find them very suitable for our souls, but to Mar Mikhael We couldn’t get warm, we can even say that it was the only place we didn’t like in Beirut.. It may be because of the terrible traffic in the middle of the street, the sound of horns drowning out human voices, or the crooked formation of buildings.. Maybe it’s because we’re so used to silence.

Still, if the noise doesn’t have a side effect on you like we do, you can visit the side-by-side workshops, boutique design stores and try the coffee shops.

Beirut National Museum

While making the Beirut Places to Visit list, we had set our minds to visit this museum and this was the only museum we entered in Beirut, and our comment about it seems to be ‘small’. but it will be effective. While we were waiting for a Middle Eastern themed museum, we came across a huge history of ‘humanity’ from the Ancient period to the Ottoman Empire.. Despite the fact that Beirut was the target of bombs during the civil war that lasted for 15 years, an extraordinary effort was made to prevent the artifacts from being damaged, and the artifacts are still in place today.

Beirut Downtown

Beirut has undergone a period of great renewal after the civil war. The modern, clean and luxurious Downtown district is also the result of this renewal.. The Downtown area was once a neutral zone between Christians and Muslims, and was severely damaged during the war.. But now the buildings are so new, so luxurious and everywhere seems so rich that you say this is the same city..!

You can also enjoy the traffic-free zones, which are very rare in Beirut, and see how people turn traffic-free areas into parks in a city with so little greenery.. Of course, we still prefer green, that’s different.. ☺

Downtown in order Beirut parliament building, Al Amin Mosque, Nejmeh Square (this is our favourite) and the Rolex Clock Tower in the square are the landmarks we recommend seeing.

Corniche

We’ve always talked about the interior, of course a Beirut Travel Guide In we must not mention the coastal part of Beirut! Of course, Beirut also has a coastal part that makes Beirut Beirut.. Here it is called Corniche. Along the 5 kilometer coast, luxury apartments and hotels are lined up parallel to it.. The city has almost no connection with the beach, because the beach looks like it belongs to hotels and residences.. This one will probably sound familiar to you from somewhere (I wonder where).. Here is another face of Beirut..! ☺

At the end (or beginning) of the beach, you will see one of the most famous symbols of Beirut, Pigeon Rocks.

Pigeon Rocks ( Pigeon Cliffs)

We believe every city is an ‘unforgettable sunset’ spot. Here it is! Pigeon Cliffs, one of the most important symbols of Beirut.

If you want, you can go around and through it with small boats, but if you ask us, the best thing is to watch this beautiful view from the beach and think about Beirut.

Apart from the places mentioned above, we briefly visited the American University of Beirut, the Sursock Museum, one of the symbolic structures of the civil war whose facade was completely covered with bullet marks. You can visit >Beit Beirut and Beirut’s largest shopping mall Beirut Souks. The rest is up to your imagination! ☺

Of course, Lebanon is a whole culture, a history, and it’s not just Beirut.. There are also day-to-day attractions near Beirut that are just as beautiful as Beirut.

Beirut Travel Guide – The places you can go for a day trip from Beirut;

Byblos Travel Guide(Biblos Travel Guide)

Byblos(Biblos)

Byblos, one of the oldest settlements in the world, taa It was founded by the Phoenicians, and is also one of the largest and most important port cities of antiquity.. If we increase it even more, The third oldest city in the world still alive and in existence (the oldest is Damascus)!

Byblos narrow streets, bazaar, smiling face He impressed us with his people and his calmness.. Our mothers, with whom we went on the trip, liked Byblos the most.

We spent a full day in Byblos and it was the best day of the trip for us. We recommend you to eat at Souksixteen, visit the Citadel, and if you want to buy a gift from Lebanon, take a look at the fossil shops while you’re in Byblos.

Byblos About an hour’s drive from Beirut. Since we were 4 people, we arranged a daily driver before we left and we were very satisfied with our driver.. We paid a total of 100 Usd for 4 people all day. If you want, we can give you the number.

If you want to go to Byblos by public transport from Beirut, you can take the Byblos buses that depart regularly from Dawra Bus Terminal in Beirut.

Jeita Grotto Cave

If you want to see ‘Jeita Grotto‘, the longest cave in the Middle East and nominated to be one of the new 7 wonders of the world, Byblos’ You can visit the same day with. Jeita Grotto stays on the road and it’s pretty easy to get there if you hire a driver.

Baalbek Ancient City

Constructed by Phoenicians in 1100 BC, this city is a symbol of what happened in Syria 15km away, the Lebanese civil war that lasted for 30 years and history. An ancient city that has remained astonishingly intact despite what has happened in this geography throughout. The splendor of the pillars is not spoiled even a little!

It is located in the Beqaa Valley to the Northeast of Beirut and is about 2 hours by car from Beirut and just 15km from the Syrian border.

Places to visit in Beirut was like this for us, now we come to something we enjoy as much as visiting Beirut, Eating and drinking in Beirut! Since Lebanese cuisine is similar to Turkish cuisine in terms of taste, it was a cuisine that we would love to wake up under normal conditions, but we ate it in Beirut because we missed Turkish cuisine in Germany! We are back with the traditional flavors of Beirut, hummus and falafel.. Let’s see where we ate;

Beirut Food and Drink Guide – Where to Eat in Beirut?

Beirut Travel Guide can’t be done without eating and drinking, Places to Visit in Beirut part is over, now we come to whet the appetite. We always ate in traditional places in Beirut; Because we love its cuisine, and you will see that the prices are much more affordable than the newly opened world cuisines.. Since we prefer local Beirut places, we can say that we came back without any pockets.