LN02: The Lovely Jouneih

18 km north of Beirut is Jounieh; the playground of the Middle East as described by "The Washington Post" few years ago. Beautifully located on the majestic Bay of Jounieh on the sea coast of the Mediterranean, Jounieh, is the city of ancient civilizations and a modern business center for the today visionary entrepreneur.
This city still retains some of the charm of yesterday in the old stone souq area near ferry terminal. The area-known as "Old Jounieh" has recently undergone an overhaul and there are outdoor cafes and restaurants mixed among boutiques, artisan shops, banks, supermarkets, hotels of all categories. The beach line was awesome, sexy and lured our temptations.
It is said that, during the summer season, a night time ascent and descent gives you a remarkable sparkling view of the Jounieh and bay area. During the spring and early summer months, you can leave a balmy sunny day along the cost and arrive at a fog enshrouded terminal building on the top.

After wandering around the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Jounieh, our hunger forced us to stop at KFC, located in front of the beach line. Muhammd Afiq and I went to the Western Union to change my USD and we spent some time exploring the beautiful spectacular beaches and the well-organized/designed town - and still developing. The people were in general belong to the high-class categories, wearing branded attires and driving high end cars, such as Porsche, X6, Lamborghini, etc. Sad to mention, Pesona or Gen2 or any other similar species, were not in the list!

I must say, the cost and standards of living here is relatively high. Ranked 4th in the world, the total GDP (2010 estimates) of this 4.3 million population was about 59 Billion USD, which gives another number of 15K USD per Capita. These facts had proven me wrong. As the saying goes; “seeing is believing.” It was always in my little mind that, Lebanon in general was still under-privileged and far behind from the development line. The attitude of the people had helped the country to bounce back from their past dramatically positive.