Good morning guys, from Byblos, Lebanon.
It is our second day exploring this place here with my buddy Luke.
We are going to be showing you guys all around Byblos.
It is one of the oldest
civilizations or one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world.
I want to say top ten.
(Yeah top ten) Top ten,
and so it's a really unique place.
Very, very different than I would say Jounieh and Beirut.
It's got a much more, I don't even know how to explain it.
(You can tell like it's old. It's very like you can just tell)
(from the buildings, it's definitely a completely different architecture.)
Yeah. (And good vibes all around you know.)
And it feels so much different like
we did a quick little walk around to see
what the nightlife was like here last night, and all the alleyways were filled
with bars and crazy electronic music going
so it's got a really nice atmosphere to it.
And I'll be honest here,
you can't really feel as much the economic crisis as when you're in
Beirut you can actually feel it a lot more.
And so we're gonna be checking out this
place showing you guys, there's a cool castle to check out here,
markets, probably do some shopping,
and also we're going to walk down
by the harbor and see what types of beaches they have.
So there's a lot of little things that you can do around here.
Keep yourself busy for a day, a couple of days.
We're gonna be sharing all that with you guys over the next couple hours here.
So let's do it.
You saw how this place looked like last night,
you could barely walk. Had to squeeze through different areas.
Now, I think probably everyone's resting from a long night out.
And there's not too many people here at, it's
about 12:30-ish, maybe almost 1:00
in the afternoon, and it's still pretty quiet around here
so we'll see if even now is the best time
to explore this place, maybe we'll come back to the market
it a little bit later after we get a feel for what's going on over here.
The nice part about Byblos, since it's a really small place,
you can easily walk from one side to the other in a matter of maybe ten minutes.
So let's go ahead and see what we can get into down here.
So we're walking up on the castle right here.
I thought this was the entrance, so it might be closed, actually, at this time.
Let's go ahead and see
what the situation is. Hello.
(Hi.)
How much is it to get tickets here?
(8,000) 8,000 lira? Sweet.
You want to go in now Luke?
(Yeah, let's do it.) Yeah.
All right. Sweet.
Yeah. That's a nice AirCon in there.
Shukran. Yes,
we got the tickets for 8,000 lira. All right,
we have entered the castle. We're walking in here
guys, this is kind of the initial looks in here.
You got your ruins,
you got ruins that stretch probably maybe four or five acres
it looks like, with my initial views
of this area that you can see a bit of, it almost feel like,
you have, what is it,
Athens up there with some of these other ruins right here.
I kind of feel a little bit of Tulum, maybe distant cousins of Tulum.
All ruins look pretty similar because
they've been beaten by the Earth for tens or thousands of years or so.
So we are entering in the c astle right now.
Looks like we have some installed lights here to see it's.
A bit of a maze.
Not as many people in here as I would have expected on a Saturday.
You think there'd be even more people here?
You can see how intact it still is, which is quite phenomenal.
I got to figure out how much, how many years old this thing is for you guys,
because I can tell you it looks like it has seen many, many winters.
Let's check out the pier views up there.
Oh, you can see more of the ruins stretches out quite a bit.
So I have figured it out after a quick little Google search.
This is specifically called
the Byblos Citadel, and it's been around since basically the 12th century.
I want to say 1103 is what Luke said.
So that's what a solid almost 900-something years already.
And after 900 years, it still looks like this.
That's pretty impressive, if you ask me.
Very cool, though.
Imagine this castle at its prime days when
you can see beautiful views of the Mediterranean Sea
and this is your palace.
Let's see what we got going on up here up on top of the staircase.
These are probably the best views in town. Oh, yeah.
You can see the mountains.
Oh, there's the beach. That's the beach
we wanted to check out.
Some people told us yesterday that that's
one of the best places to go swimming in this area.
It's really a great place where you can kind of figure out the lay of the land.
I want to say also, I saw somewhere in those mountains
that there are some great sunset spots for food and drinks.
Maybe we'll show that to you guys in another video.
I think that's Jounieh probably down there
and probably just on the other side of the peninsula down there,
I'm guessing that is probably Batroun.
So not too far away, just a quick 15-minute cruise.
And actually, I just said this is probably
the best place to see everything, but probably not actually.
If you look up here, those look like the best views.
So let's figure out how we can get up there.
The good thing is I think we're going to get our exercise in today because
that's got to be what maybe like six flights of stairs to climb up to the top.
Let's go ahead and figure that out.
I'm glad we have a bit of an overcast day,
though, because that's keeping the temperature at least slightly cooler.
I want to say it's around
31 Celcius or 87 Fahrenheit
last time I checked, like, an hour ago.
So probably with the sun out, it feels like double that.
All right, so now we are entering. Oh, there we go.
This is the staircase up.
Probably gonna take my sunglasses off because I can't really see anything.
Definitely can feel that workout, I'll tell you that.
All right, we've made it up one level.
It means we're getting close.
How do we get all the way up,
that's the real question.
Maybe one of these pathways.
Unless this is as high as we can go.
Oh, that could be it.
That's got to be it right here.
Or these are just viewpoints.
Cool little viewpoints right here.
Wow. Stunning.
So that one was more of a viewpoint.
It looks like this is the staircase in order to get up to the top.
Let's go ahead and see what's up here.
Oh, these stairs are super cool.
Leading up here.
Looks like you got a couple stopoff points, too
on the way up, sweet.
Oh, yeah, that workout
like I was telling you. Which way do we go?
Oh, it's like, oh, it's a passageway, sweet.
It's super tight little cave here, walking through.
I think we're about to have some viewpoints revealed, and there we go.
Reveals here and there's
looks like there's one level higher
we can go right up to the top.
Alright, and we have now officially made it to the highest point in the castle.
This is where you'll get the best views
of Byblos.
You can see pretty much everything in the city from here.
We got Luke over here just taking in the views.
How's it looking over here, bro?
(It's beautiful.)
Absolutely stunning,
you can literally see everything from up here.
(Full 360 view of the city.)
(City's on that side and beautiful beaches on the right.)
Insane.
Yeah, I bet the King when he built this, he had no idea
that, like, 900 years later,
we'd be taking off with a little drone from up here to get even better views than
he could see from up here. And then probably a thousand years from now,
someone's going to be watching this piece of content,
they're going to be like yeah I landed my flying car there so.
Yeah, I'm gonna teleport us back down
because there's not too much else to show you on the way back down.
See you there.
All right we made it back down to the street level here.
Looks like we've got a wax museum right here.
Probably not gonna visit it today,
but just in case you're interested to know, I think right along the routes
here, there are a couple of different churches.
We actually saw a wedding happening on one of these last night,
so it looks like a pretty cool spot to get married right here in Byblos.
(They do be vibing.) Yeah.
(Weddings here are different.) Yeah, they were vibing hard.
We got to learn those dance moves if we show up to one.
So we're coming up on the harbor here.
Got a nice little view from right on top of the restaurants.
You can see all these boats.
I'm pretty sure you can rent,
a lot of them are for rent for either like
dinner cruises or day cruises to go out on the water.
It doesn't seem like too many people are out at the moment.
You got one boat out there in the distance,
but it's a nice little atmosphere just to come and walk around. As you can see
probably right down there, there's restaurants here.
You got a nice little vibe right here.
You actually feel like you have the ancient ruins that you're eating next
to while you're enjoying a meal in this spot.
I will say, though, midday in the summer it does get pretty hot.
Yeah, sweating hard.
That pool right down there looks absolutely fantastic to jump in right now.
All right,
and we are arriving down into, almost fell there.
Arriving down into the harbor.
Still looks pretty vibey, last night it was nice,
there was a lot more traffic. Now it's a little more peaceful
not as much going on.
A bunch of super cool boats too, like I was
saying out there. We got a whole bunch of different designs, though.
They've all got to be like 50 to 100 years old.
Alright, not sure where that last part cut out, but we are walking around the marina here.
Looks like there's a viewpoint.
I'm not very confident that we can get up to the top though
if you see it. I was hoping we'd be able to see
the entire marina from here, the entire harbor.
But unfortunately, as we get closer,
I'm starting to see a big rusty gate in front of it so that may not be possible.
(I think we can get up there.) Do you think so?
All right well, Luke's pretty confident. (This is why I always get hurt.)
Yeah, exactly.
This is why he's a dangerous one to travel with.
It's all padlocked.
It's a bit sketchy though.
Yeah, we'll be climbing barbed wire in no time.
(All right.)
Just a wee bit sketchy, but all right.
And then there's just an easy staircase up yeah?
(I want to avoid the barbed wire)
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Oh, you free?
How's it looking up there?
(We made it)
All right, let's see how the hell I get over this barbed wire.
This is sketchy as hell.
And we have
made it up to the top.
Alright, so this is the view. Got ripped up by a few thorns,
got a couple holes in me now, but hey, we got up here, right?
Oh, I bet they must have closed it down.
This probably would be a great cliff jumping spot.
I don't recommend it though.
You have no idea how deep it is.
Here you go, guys up here from the Marina.
Go down here, see if Luke found anything.
Seems like it's just a, a little walkway.
People obviously come up here because there are surprisingly
quite a bit of trash. Nothing better than finding out
there's an easier way down, especially when you're going through thorn
bushes and barbed wire along with broken glass everywhere.
Yeah,
thank God I have my handy dandy Syrian shoes right now for nine bones
and $0.50 are getting me right down here safely.
Well, that's made for people with long legs, that's for sure.
All right. Wow.
Yeah, that was ten X easier than going up,
but sometimes you got to take the path less traveled.
But the true experience when traveling. I'm sweating so much,
the sweat dropped in my eyes and my eyes are burning right now.
Oh, we're coming up on this spot.
It looks like they've got some on the water dining here.
Super cool with spots.
It's like a quaint little town overall.
So that's pretty much the Marina for you.
Got lots of restaurants you can visit and spend some time here.
So I'm gonna go ahead and check out
and we'll show you maybe the market in just a little bit.
We need to cool down.
As you can probably see on my face, I'm dripping sweat and it's in my eyes
so we'll see you in maybe an hour or so.
We were walking down the road right after
I just filmed that clip saying, I'm gonna put the camera away.
And then I'm guessing the manager of the shop, he must have maybe saw our
content, and he immediately saw that we were Vloggers, and he was like, oh, yeah
come and check out my shop. Kind of funky
when you first walk in, you're like, Are there a bunch of people in here?
What is it made of
is it made of plastic? Silicon.
Inside, I have a sample you can touch it.
Oh, we got Spiderman right here.
Oh, he caught something. That's intense.
How we work.
I literally thought that was a real person.
I was like, that must be your boss there.
So first thing we do is that we choose the character.
We gather information, pictures, hair color, eye color, height and start sculping on clay. (Sculping on clay, yeah?)
Then we do the mould,
and the mould
we add the materials. Okay
so it can be Silicon and it can be wax.
How many layers of color does it take? (15 layers here just to give it the skin tone,)
Whoa.
(and we have to take into consideration the veins.) The veins, yeah.
(That's so much detail right there.)
He is like crazy realistic
Yeah. (The head,)
(this is real hair.)
It's real yeah?
(It's imported from India, and it's implanted hair by hair.)
Wow. (Individually? Yeah)
And so when you're walking through here
at night, is it creepy sometimes because you're like, Whoa.
(I got used to it.)
This is the sample, you can touch it.
Whoa.
And Luke in case you need an extra finger bro. (Yeah, I'm missing fingers,)
(I need a spare one)
(Nice.)
(That is crazy.)
Exactly, crazy real.
Why is this guy, he looks very sick.
Is he ill? Why is he purple?
(This is the wax.) Ah that's the wax one yeah?
Oh yeah so the silicon, they look a lot more realistic than the wax. (Exactly)
(So here we're showing the comparison between wax and silicon.) Oh yeah, yeah.
So can anyone come and visit this place?
(Yes, of course. And get a tour guide,)
(explain like I explained to you.) And what do they pay to get in? Or it changes because of the rates?
(Yeah, it's 50,000 Lira) 50,000, yeah? (or like, $2 and a half.)
Okay, $2 and a half, nice.
Yeah, it's definitely a cool place to check out.
It's like, freaky cool because everyone seems so real.
Like when you saw at the beginning,
we walked around the corner we're like, whoa, there's a person and you can feel it
and it's an experience for sure.
Yeah if you got a few minutes in Byblos make sure to make a stop over there.
It's crazy how much detail has gone into making those things.
And really, like, unique,
especially with all the different world figures they have displayed,
it's very interesting.
Some very controversial, as you probably saw.
So now I'm going to continue looking
for that AC where I can cool off for a few minutes.
We got lemonade right here.
Oh, shukran, shukran, thank you. (Welcome)
Look at it, we ended up coming across just by stumbling upon it.
Some delicious frozen lemonade.
That is very good.
As you can see, I'm completely sweaty
everywhere, but this is the cure right now.
I don't even need AC because it's cooling down the internal body temperature.
Now it's time to get a meal after,
I'm having a one of these little sweets earlier.
What are they called again? What did we have this morning?
(Knafeh) Knafeh
Yeah, I had that and honestly held me off the last, like, 6 hours.
It was still filling.
(Absolute calorie overload.)
Yeah, absolute calorie overload.
(We probably had our daily intake in just one meal.)
Exactly.
So now it's time to double that calorie intake and try out the Malak Tawouk.
Oh, it's closed, no.
Oh, no.
I'm so hungry. (When do you open?)
(I don't know.) You don't know?
You're working here though, right?
(Yes but we don't have electricity.)
Ah ok you stopped because of electricity. (Yes)
How long has the electricity been off?
(It's been for 30 minutes.)
So it could come on any time and then you'll open again? (Yes)
Okay.
Maybe we can walk around the market, see what they've got in this area.
I'm surprised,
I figured the markets were going to be a bit busier at this time
but not yet.
I'm trying to figure out what I want to buy, though.
I need a hat. (A hat?) Like Lebanon hat.
(This would do or no.)
You got a wig?
You should get that bro.
One plus one equals three if you don't use a condom.
All right, we'll give it one last look here.
So far, a bit more of souvenirs, less of shirts and things like that, that I'd
probably buy just to have one while I'm in Lebanon.
But, yeah, if you're looking for souvenirs, you're looking for, like, blankets,
like little things that go on shelves and things like that.
You can find magnets, postcards.
Oh, what do we got here.
(Infinity, heartbeat, feather, and Mandala cedars from Lebanon.)
Are these for men? (Yes, silver for men.)
That's a little tight, though.
Is there a way to adjust it? (What?)
Because it's cutting my circulation.
Is there a way to loosen? (Yeah.)
What do you think, does that match up pretty well? (Matching.) Yeah?
What do you think, yeah? (Yeah.)
So I'm looking pretty good now, we've got
my pine tree here matching my other bracelet, so they hooked it up,
130 Lebanese lira and custom fitted.
So thank you so much. Bye now.
All right, guys
and I think that's where we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up.
We've pretty much did everything you can do during the day here in Byblos.
The only thing is I'd say we probably didn't show you
was there's a couple of churches that we saw last night,
but other than that, I mean, like I said at the beginning of this
video, it's a pretty a small place that you can explore relatively quickly
and definitely check out the night life as well
it's a lot of fun. I mean, the nightlife from what I'm
starting to gather in all of Lebanon is a lot of fun, a lot of electronic music.
So you can definitely do that after a full
day of exploring this place and also the boat rides.
That's something we weren't able to do
this time, but it seems like it's a lot of fun.
There was a boat that just pulled in,
it seems like everyone was partying on it.
So that's pretty much it.
We're probably going to be exploring
maybe Batroun, Batron
however, we say it
and a few other cities further up north over the next couple of days.
And so looking forward to seeing you guys
in the next video, make sure to hit that like button.
And if you want to see more videos like
this, hit that subscribe button, and we'll see you guys in the next Lebanon video.