Ancient City of the Sun

The second stop on our tour was at Baalbeck, also known as Heliopolis. To quite Wikipedia: It is Lebanon's greatest Roman treasure, and it can be counted among the wonders of the ancient world (woot that's two for me now!), containing some of the largest and best preserved Roman ruins.

This is what the city would have looked like.

Here is what remains of the Temple of what was originally thought to be Venus. My tour guide said they now believe it was actually for a goddess of fertility (I forget the name she gave though-she moved us through very quickly).

 Entrance to the city. No idea about the film crew there.

 These niches were believed to hold statues of Greek gods or muses.

After the death of Alexander the Great Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, changed hands a great deal. At one time the main courtyard was covered with a wooden roof and these chambers were added when it served as a Christian church. There was also a mosque built in the city during another period.

 All the remains of the Temple of Jupiter, which was the largest of the city's temples, are these six pillars.

 Of which I took many pictures.

From many angles.

What is most intact is the Temple of Bacchus. While it looked pretty darn large to me, it was a lesser temple in the city in it's day.

 As viewed from the Temple of Jupiter.

 Entrance

 Once again I *heart* Photoshop effects.

 I'm not sure exactly where this fit but I believe it was once part of the outer wall.

 The carving on some of the fallen stones is still very clear and must have been amazing in it's glory.

Baalbeck is not very far from Beirut. I'm very glad some friends suggested I go see this as I would have been very sad to have missed it. If you're ever in Lebanon definitely make room for a visit here in your schedule!

The City of Anjar

I was really lucky to have a free day when I got to Beirut before I had to start working. So on Sunday I skipped Mass (and felt really guilty because the Catholic Archdiocese church is right next to my hotel) to take a tour. Through a friend's recommendation I went through Nakhal Tours which ended up being a really good deal. For $80 I got picked up and dropped back off at my hotel, had an English speaking tour guide, a nice air conditioned bus, and the tour took us to Anjar, Baalbeck, and Ksara with a stop in the afternoon for a very excellent lunch of Lebanese mezze.

Our first stop was in Anjar, which is heavily Armenian rather than Lebanese, to visit the ruins of the Umayyad city-another World Heritage Site checked off my imaginary list.

 Entry to Umayyad. The main street here once housed shops which lined both sides.

 Remaining colonnades along the main thoroughfare.

 Palace

 I spent a long time photographing the remains of these pillars.

 I love Photoshop.

 Snow capped mountains in the background! It was kind of wild to see those while standing next to a palm tree.

 Lebanon got it's name from an old Semitic word 'leban' meaning white. People called this the white country because of the snowy mountains. You can ski and go to the beach in the same day.

Next up on the tour-Baalbeck! Which is like Anjar but times about 12. But that's for next time.

Easter Dessert Celebration

In my rush to say what a marvelous time I was having on my latest travel adventure I completely forgot to post about my Easter dessert celebration. Similar to my sugar coma birthday (in idea if not scale) I had some friends over for dessert. I gave up all junk foods during Lent and what I missed the most was sugar. So the day before I left the country for 2.5 weeks I decided to make a bunch of desserts.

I started out making what I call a Chocolate Covered Strawberry cake. This is the same as the White Chocolate Passion Fruit cake of a few years ago but with strawberries. This one is more fun though because you can put the fruit between the cake layers-a little hard to do with the neon yellow goo that is the passion fruit.

Between the two layers of cake I spread first a generous amount of ganache then put strawberry slices into the ganache. I let it sit a little while in the fridge to cool before putting on the second cake layer and more ganache. Once the top layer hardens it's ready to be covered with the white chocolate mousse.

Next I made German Chocolate Brownies. I used a box brownie mix (I think they're really good) and added shredded coconut and pecans. Then I made caramel as I did for the Rita Hayworth cake and poured it into the brownie batter.

Lesson learned: next time I'll pour the caramel in strips the short way rather than the long way. More caramel per square that way.

I also made raspberry macaroons with a recipe I got from Smitten Kitchen. Hers turned out much prettier than did mine but they still tasted good. I used frozen raspberries instead of fresh ones and I wonder if that was the difference. I'll have to try making them again soon. It was a really easy recipe since you're just blending things in a food processor which I appreciated as mine rarely gets a workout.

 Adding the sea salt to the coconut

 Then almond extract

 Next egg whites

 Finally raspberries

 I have a feeling my batter was too wet because of the frozen berries so I also had a hard time scooping it out onto the parchment paper-and I had to bake them longer than her recipe indicates.

In addition to these I also again made the lemon goat cheese cake with wild blueberry compote (from Sugar Coma), dipped strawberries in chocolate, cut up some of the left over caramel and put it out with fleur de sal and melted chocolate, and put out some cheese (which I didn't make).

Thanks to everyone taking home leftovers I didn't waste anything and the few pieces of things I was left with I ate for breakfast and lunch before leaving on my trip!

Behind the T-walls: Roma R&R part 1

I arrived to Rome on a Sunday morning, to Sunny skies and warm temperatures, especially compared to the cold in Istanbul. Once I got settled into my (tiny) hotel room, my first order of business was to find the nearest church to attend Mass. Luckily for me, my hotel was near to the Diocletian Baths, and the Basilica dei Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. It was just a 5 minute walk from my room, and around the corner from the Termini Station. Score! As it was just about midday, I figured there was probably a Mass going on, and I was right!

Though the church doesn't really look like anything special from the street, as I approached, I could see just how special this space really was as soon as I saw the doors:

The Annunciation

Christ Resurrected

When I walked into the Church, the light was streaming in through the windows, and I was absolutely floored. The interior of the building was stunning, and I was really excited to finally be able to go back to Mass (not an option at all for me in Baghdad). Just being there I felt like I'd come back "home" again.

The marble was pink, and and beautifully carved, and the altar was no exception:

The ceilings ceiling of the Tribume above the altar was also beautifully painted:

What you can't see from my pictures here is that the church was built with the sun, moon, and stars in mind. Inside the Church, there is a meridian line, or a kind of sundial that tracks the movement of the sun on the floor, with dates marked along the way and is also used to track the equinoxes and solstices. When you look above the line,  you can also see that the Church was also designed to track the movement of stars:

The "head" of John the Baptist. How appropriate for Lent!

Following the Mass, I spent the rest of the day just walking, looking at beautiful things, eating pizza, ice cream, and of course drinking espresso! Stomach flu be gone!

I continued to walk even as the sun set, and did quite a fair bit of shopping, too! One of the first things I did was to swap out my drab winter coat for a beautifully fashionable Italian one!!!

Ciao!