Our Batroun Anniversary

This is what Megan thinks of when she hears "Batroun".

The end of the school year kept us so busy that we almost forgot our sixth wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we decided to spend Sunday in Batroun, a town almost 60 kilometers (or 37 miles) north of Beirut.

This is what Wade thinks of when he hears "Batroun".

The problem is that we had two very different ideas about what a day in Batroun would be like. Megan woke up Sunday morning and put on her bathing suit and flip flops; Wade laced up his hiking boots and packed his map of the surrounding area. After some marital discussion about the nature of anniversaries and how to celebrate them, Wade and Meg decided to include both hiking and beach lounging in their anniversary excursion.

The trip up to Batroun is a short one when there isn't much traffic. We paid $2.33 for the bus ride from Beirut, and the driver dropped us off on the side of the highway next to a fort called the Moussalaya Castle (its sometimes spelled Museilha). Thus began Wade's half of the anniversary.

Museilha sits in the middle of a narrow pass along the road from Batroun to Tripoli (the largest city in northern Lebanon). So this was an obviously strategic spot to protect trade routes.

Archeologists, however, have been scratching their heads about Museilha. The fort does not fit the architectural plans of crusader castles, and there are a lot of those along the Lebanese coast. There is also not any evidence that a fort existed there during the Roman period.

All of the architectural details of the fort -- the low hanging ceilings, the size of the bricks, the style of the arches -- point to the last 400-500 years of history. The earliest primary source that refers to Musseilha corroborates dating the fort to around 1600. A French traveler in 1689 claimed that Fakhr al-Din built the fort while governing Lebanon from 1590 to 1635 (Wade organized a 9th grade field trip in the fall to retrace the steps of Fakhr al-Din).

Megan and Wade know all of that about Museilha because it's written on a sign outside the fort! That's right, for the first time, historical information was readily available at a historical site in Lebanon. Since the "USAID" insignia appears on the sign, we can thank the American taxpayer for the funding.

Megan, next to a rare Lebanese historical marker.

The sign was so informative and well-organized that we almost forgot that we were in Lebanon. That's when the custodian of the castle reminded us of where we were -- he didn't hesitate to give us the key to Museilha so that we could explore the place on our own.

Wade holds the key to the castle, quite literally.

Megan loves Wade so much that she pretends to be excited about spending her anniversary in another castle.

With Museilha fully explored, it was time for Megan's half of the anniversary to begin. But for us to spend time on the beach, we had to first walk to the beach. That took longer than expected. We walked for several miles -- along the highway, through olive groves, past more random ruins, until finally we saw the Mediterranean.

It was like a curse. Instead of the beach that we read about, we found even more history -- a sea wall built by the Phoenicians about 3,000 years ago!

Wade, standing in front of the Phoenician sea wall.

After thirty more minutes of exploring the streets of Batroun, we finally found a public beach. By that point, however, we were tired, dehydrated and hungry. So instead of putting on our bathing suits we settled in for a nice long lunch.

By the end of lunch, Megan had lost the desire to relax on a beach. Besides, she had the opportunity to live vicariously from our beach-front restaurant; at least she could watch other people relaxing under the sun on a lazy Sunday.

On our wedding day six years ago, the preacher giving the Homily mentioned that the key to a successful marriage is compromise. It's definitely Wade's turn to compromise.