A trip around the country!

I initially wrote this for my last post, but I thought it’d be nice to have it be a standalone. I have recently discovered how wonderful it is to read past posts about special events you want to remember. I stumbled upon my First Day of School post, and honestly I wouldn’t really remember much of what happened weren’t it written down. I do have a diary, but it’s rather messy and way less detailed. That’s why I decided to make a single post for this, with all the pictures included, so I could look back on it one day and smile 🙂

The school trip! It was so good.

We went to Zahle, a city in Lebanon you’ve never heard of because you barely know what a Lebanon is. But fear not! I made sure to captute everything in pictures, just for you 😀

First, we visited Ksara, a renowned winery.

We arrived, and watched a short documentary about the history of Ksara, and how they produce wine. Just like with all documentaries showing how a factory makes its products, it was extremely satisfying.

Then, we went to the tasting bar, where glasses of white wine were awaiting us (yes. Wine tasting school trips for us 16 year olds. Your faves could never.)
May I just say, they tasted AMAZING. I usually don’t like wine but this tasted like *insert very sophisticated and hard to spell adjective here*.

Now came the awesome part: we got to visit the caves where they kept the wine barrels!
It was like we were transported into war catacombs (by the way, according to the tour guide they were used during wars for people to hide). My and my Potterhead of a bestie felt like we were exploring the Chamber of Secrets. See for yourself!

After the winery, we visited a couple of touristic places. This is the Berdawneh:

It doesn’t have anything too special but it’s just a nice place. It’s usually ‘active’ only during summer, so when we went the restaurants weren’t open. It was still a nice walk by the river.

Next, we visited the Lady of Zahle church. I didn’t take much pictures of the actual church because we were all too busy with the awesome tower:

See that? We had to climb literally fifty flights of stairs to get there. But it was so worth it because the view was breathtaking:

Here is my pathetic attempt at taking a dramatic picture by holding out my phone over the edge of the balcony:

As you can see I was a weeee bit shakey. I mean come on what if I dropped it.

On the way back, the landscape was nice.

But sadly it was littered with trash.

Oh look sheep!!

By the way, I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures of the mounds of trash in Beirut. It’s TERRIFYING. And disgusting. Just look it up online.

After that we had lunch in Burger King (SO YUMMEH) and went to an ammusement park. It was fun, aside from one tiny incident where I almost died.
You know the Pirate Ship? The one where you swing in a ship and you reach an almost upside down position at the summit?
Well, when I was at that summit, the seatbelt/bar that held us safe from falling unlocked and opened.
You couldn’t believe the amount of freaking out I was experiencing. Me and my friends next to me tried our hardest to push down on the bar and not fall over when the boat went up again.
But that’s not the worse part. When the ride was miraculously over with no harm done, I went off panicking, but the guy who was opperating the ride came up to me. He looked livid. I could tell he wanted to yell or to hurt someone from his eyes but he feared doing so in front of so many people. He spoke in such a heated and angry but low voice and basically threatened me that no one should know what happened, that I better keep my mouth shut and that he’s watching me. Obviously then I understood that he pushed the unlock button by accident and was scared he’d be fired if someone came to know about this. But the way he handled it was downright evil, and it left me seriously traumatized. I was scared. I couldn’t wait until we left. I kept thinking about this incident during the next few days and it bothered me a lot. It just spoke so much about what was awaiting me when I grow up, what kind of people and situations I’ll have to deal with.
Still, I didn’t let that ruin my day. I continued to have fun, and actually experienced my first 5D/XD cinema experience and it was SO COOL! I watched 2, in the first we were on a Temple Run style ride in a wagon and it was MAJESTIC. All the thrill of being on a roller coaster minus the possibility of getting killed! And the second was a very Harry Potter-esque horror movie. My friends shat their pants but I enjoyed it a LOT. I wish they made full length movies in that format. Imagine living the Battle of Hogwarts in that setting!

At last, we returned home. I ate all the left over sweets as I participating in the iconic post-trip ritual of trading pictures with everyone and laughing at the faces we made in the amusement park.

Here’s to the next trip!