The Beirut Corniche is a beautiful seaside promenade, lined with palm trees which gives you beautiful views of the Mediterranean. It is the perfect place to stroll the coastline, breathe in the sea air and experience the best of Beirut with the locals. The Corniche evokes memories of the South of France and that is likely because it was built during the French Mandate of Lebanon. It is the perfect place to start your day in Beirut.
We visited Lebanon in September and it was H O T! We visited Pidgeon Rock the afternoon before and almost died from heat stroke and so started our day of exploring nice and early.
The Beirut Corniche is a wide promenade, with palm trees, mosaic benches and beautiful water views as far as the eye can see. It was filled with locals walking, running and fishing. One of the first things that struck me about Lebanon was how tolerant and progressive it seemed.
From churches built next to mosques showing a sense of harmony to the juxtaposition of locals sharing the morning together on the Corniche. Men and women jogged along the promenade in tight, minimal running clothes, together with men and women in more conservative and religious clothing. No one seemed to even look twice at anyone else, it was a atmosphere that we didn’t find anywhere else in our travels through the Middle East in Egypt and Jordan.
The water was the most magical shade of blue and green.
We stopped to watch local fishermen and locals swimming in the sea. There was stairs cut into the rock to allow people to easily enter the water.
Sadly, there was quite a bit of rubbish trapped on the rocks and in the water but as Lebanon continues to draw more tourism I think this will be an area that they will place more of a focus on.
Isn’t that one of the most impressive fishing rod’s you’ve ever seen?
I almost had to drag Dan away as he is such a keen fisherman and could have stayed watching for hours to see what he caught.
Remnants of barbed wire, rusted from decades of salt water ensure Lebanon’s turbulent history is never far from your mind.
To the city side, the Corniche is framed by greenery and grand buildings from days gone by, together with modern new developments, perhaps a sign of Lebanon’s future.
We loved Beirut and would love to come back again one day to explore more of Lebanon! We highly recommend it to anyone wanting to visit the Middle East. The people are welcoming and friendly, the food is amazing, the weather is perfect, prices are good and we felt completely safe the whole time!
The Corniche was by far one of our favourite places in Beirut.
Displaying our Favourite Travel Photos
We love having photos that we’ve taken on our travels framed and displayed around our home. Some people prefer to frame photos from a landscape photographer, but I personally prefer displaying our own photos. To me, there is no better souvenir you can take from your travels than photos! I love flipping through my photobooks which live on our wine rack in the living room and being transported back to those wonderful holiday memories through the photos on our walls.
We’ve got photos from all around the world, and in particular from our favoruite countries. These are Italy, Morocco, New Zealand, Turkey, Greece, Iceland, Finland, Bolivia, Portugal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Peru.
We really fell in love with Lebanon and will definitely be printing and framing some of our photos from this trip. I’m certain that at least one of these gorgeous photos from the Beirut Corniche will make the cut. I think we will choose a metallic shade or white frame which will make the blues really pop! We have a mixture of glass prints, silver, white and light timber frames throughout our house. Our home is quite new and the walls and floors are all grey or white and our furniture is white and timber so we are quite lucky that our decor can really be any colour or shade and it will work!
Is Lebanon on your bucket list? x
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This post was written in collaboration with Tarkett.
All words and opinions are our own.
