New Year's in Beirut

There is a storm sweeping through Lebanon bringing wind, rain and snow at higher elevations. A bit of a shame cos it's a long weekend for us - Monday off as it's the Prophet Mohammad's birthday. Interesting fact - the Muslim calendar is a lunar one, so a year in the calendar is shorter than the western, Gregorian calendar. This means that there will be two Prophet's birthdays in 2015, once this weekend and once in December (the exact date escapes me at the moment). And while we're on the subject of holidays, Tuesday is the Armenian Christmas and a public holiday in Lebanon. Sadly, my work doesn't recognise Armenian Christmas as an official holiday and I have to go to work.

I had a relatively quiet New Year's Eve with three other friends. Definitely quiet by Lebanese standards judging from the war stories told at work on Friday.

We started with a glass of wine at friend's apartment, then proceeded to Le Sushi Bar, near Monot. Dinner was nice and the food was of high quality, though not entirely suitable for me given my squeamishness about raw fish and seafood allergy. Still, I managed fine with the cooked, non-shrimp/crab options and was pretty full by the time we were down. The deserts were average. I had a Double Chocolate Fondant. The texture of the cake was more undercooked rather than moist and
the cake didn't quite ooze in the middle like it should have. We also ordered a bottle of Italian wine (the Japanese/Italian combination seems popular in this part of the world, more on that another time) and one of our party had a cocktail. The bill came to US$90 each, an outrageous sum given that we hadn't ordered that much alcohol.

Goodie bag from the restaurant containing various noise and light
emitting devices. The hat too. 

We left the restaurant at about 10.30 and shared a bottle of champagne while walking through the streets towards Gemmayze. I love the fact that drinking on the streets is completely A-OK in Beirut. So unlike the liquor bans around New Zealand. Then again, the Lebanese are a lot more civilised when it comes to drinking. Binge drinking and the associated anti-social behaviour is rare and frowned upon.

We finished the champagne across the road from the iconic Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut while waiting for the midnight fireworks. That's another novelty for me - try drinking alcohol in front of a mosque in Malaysia and you'd be lynched for being 'insulting Islam'. Yet here in Beirut, there lots of groups having a peaceful drink next to revellers in head scarves. No issue and no one blinked an eye. It was also nice how they closed the Gemmayze area to traffic, turning it into a pedestrian street.

There was no countdown where we were and people were setting fireworks off at about 11.40. Blaring of ship horns from the harbour signalled the stroke of midnight and the New Year. Cue more fireworks and people blowing on various whistles, horns and other noise-makers. I merrily joined in with the toy trumpet I got in my goodie bag.

I managed to capture a burst of fireworks

Glimpse of the crowd at the Al-Amin Mosque waiting for midnight

Fireworks done, we headed to Dragonfly, a bar in Gemmayze. The friends order drinks, I passed as I was beginning to feel the effects of alcohol. I headed home at around 12.30 and was asleep before 2 am.