I’m sitting in a cafe in downtown Beirut, minutes from the Mediterranean coast. It’s around 18c outside, and quite a clear day. I arrived in Lebanon quite late last night but I’ve already had a bit of a look around. My sprained foot really isn’t helping matters, and I’m quite annoyed at Orange for not allowing me to use my phone/Blackberry here at all (not even for phone calls). But hey, I’m in Lebanon so I better try to enjoy it a bit!

First impressions are that this is a very rich country for the region. The roads and infrastructure generally seem very good, despite the regular power cuts here at Costa Coffee. The roads weren’t as scary as people said they were. The airport is quite new. The streets are safe 24/7 apparently, and so far I can see that people are very friendly and helpful – it feels safer than London. The plane had some ridiculous turbulence at around 10 minutes from landing – around the same spot where the Ethiopian Airlines flight went down earlier in the week. One of BMI’s flight attendants was injured, and the other attendants came dashing through the cabin with a look of death on their face. But hey, it got the passengers talking to each other.

The taxi driver from the airport showed me the boundary to the Hezbollah controlled area. Apparently I’ll be arrested if I go there, although they say that Hezbollah are quite friendly and very nice whilst arresting and interrogating trespassing foreigners… I’d rather not find out.

Now, after four espresso macchiatos, I better go and do some sight-seeing and take some more photos.

I’ve just read that the Lebanese PM Sa’ad Hariri fears an incursion by Israel soon. Jolly good – that will make this trip even more exciting then.

The picture here is of the Al-Omari mosque in central Beirut, which I took this morning.