I got my bags packed on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Amateur Traveler episode 710. Today the Amateur Traveler talks about museums and

mosques, churches and cedars, Phoenicians and Falafelsles as we go to Lebanon.

I know that I should be heading home,

but maybe not, maybe not today.

Welcome to the Amateur Traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen. Let's talk about

Lebanon. I'd like to welcome the show Vanessa Hobaca, who has come to us right now from New York, but originally

from Lebanon has come to talk to us about Lebanon.

You can find Vanessa on her recently opened YouTube channel of the same name or on

Instagram Vanessa welcome to the show. Thanks curious for having around the show I'm

really happy to be here. Well and I appreciate you

pitching. We haven't talked about Lebanon in a number of years now and things have

changed. Well first they got a little worse after we talked about the last time and then they've

certainly gotten better sense then.

Why should someone go to Lebanon?

For so many reasons and some of it may be biased because I'm from there but generally and after having

traveled to quite a few places I do think that the main reasons for anyone to

travel to Lebanon would be the element of surprise and how unexpected the whole

Lebanon experience will be to them.

I live in the US and I've been to a lot of places and I know how many misconceptions are there about the Middle East and about Lebanon and every person I know who has visited Lebanon for the first time said that they did not expect to see any of this.

And this is mainly because, first of all, the diversity.

...