The Most Underrated Country I've Visited | Lebanon Travel Vlog

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

for years I've had this bucket list stream to circle the entire Mediterranean this summer I'm finally turning this dream into a reality by traveling to six countries in just 40 days with my sister Sage together we really want to see these places through a feminine lens and specifically share the stories of local women along the way when we were putting this trip around the Mediterranean Lebanon was one of our top dream destinations as I spent a summer in Beirut about six years ago but we thought we wouldn't really be able to pull it off just for a variety of reasons so as we started planning our trip my friend at the time Ramsey who lives here in New York told me he was visiting his family in Lebanon basically around the same time that I'd be circling the Mediterranean invited sage and I to come stay with his family the timing honestly ended up being perfect and the Lebanese are some of the most hospitable people around so we were so excited to be able to stay with locals and experience the country in this unique way so before I knew it sage and I rearranged our flight and we're headed to Lebanon so like I mentioned this actually isn't my first time here my brother lived in Lebanon for three years and so when I was in college and 19 years old I interned with the humanitarian non-profit that he worked for so I was here for a summer the focus was on the refugee crisis in Lebanon and I spent over a month living in Beirut in this neighborhood called bourge hamoud and often commuted to the refugee camps along the border Syria on the Baka valley I really found fell in love with the locals the food the culture and the history and since then Lebanon has continuously fascinated me and really held a large piece in my heart and I've always wanted to visit again and so now they do 25 I am so excited to see more of this beautiful country over this next week we're headed to Beirut that's ruin bee blouse and Tripoli we're also here to meet Sarah the founder of Sarah's bag and a really incredible fashion house and a social Enterprise that creates these really stunning handcrafted bags through employing at-risk local female Artisans as you'll see Lebanon was a country packed with contradictions and complexities as well as recent Devastation but it also holds so much warmth and strength and honestly it's so much fun I'm really thrilled to be here to discover as much as I can and to learn more about what it's like to be a woman here foreign actually lived here for three years from like 2015 to 2018 and I think his stories and photos from living in Beirut were super impactful for both of us and so it's amazing to finally go see it for ourselves for yourself for myself I will also say if like this location is one of our most nuanced in this trip uh Lebanon has been through a lot especially since when I was last here it's been through a lot throughout the entirety of its history but especially in the past few years but in the midst of all that certainly not despite it we are very excited to get to go to Lebanon to uncover a little bit more of the history the culture meet Lebanese people and like with the rest of these videos try to get a bit more of a local female lens that's enough chit chat from us let's start exploring Lebanon yeah let's go we're coming to you from apparently this is one of the oldest inhabited towns yeah in the world there is like tracing back to like eight thousand seven thousand BC we are currently at the Citadel and seeing the beautiful architecture here the coloring is stunning the ocean the blue the sky these tan rocks something else specifically was built by the Crusaders in the 12th century he read that it's like all indigenous Limestone and like use a lot of like old Roman techniques which is why I think we're again we're seeing a lot of similarities from this it might be Acropolis yeah there's a lot of similarities in architecture and stuff which is amazing and this is actually not my first time to biblos or this Citadel I came back in 2017 which is crazy it's one of those things where it's like you never think you've actually get to come back so it's very special that I get to see it for a second time yeah so now I'm showing this one around and giving her a lay of the land at least at least did this video though gorgeous the colors shifts Keys We zoom in on these guys they're waving I see them there they are ancient Roman roommates I've never seen such a breath of history in one space it's from like 8000 BC we're sitting in a Roman Colosseum commod thing right now and then there's a crusader Castle right behind us that salad then captured if you can ever go to Lebanon please so it's my favorite time time for a little history lesson we can go way back with the history of Lebanon since it's home to one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world but let's pick a starting point the first major civilization in Lebanon where the Phoenicians who are famous for their civil ages all throughout the Mediterranean and by the first millennium BC they already had colonies as far as Tunisia and Spain which you will see throughout the series after the Phoenicians came a ton of Empires caliphates and Military occupations way too many to figure the Ottoman Empire took over around the 1500s and then around World War One when the Ottoman Empire collapsed Lebanon was placed under a French mandate where Modern development and French influence spread all throughout Society you can still hear a lot of French in the streets of Beirut today which is actually super helpful for me and my somewhat limited High School French skills Lebanon finally became an independent state made of 18 different religious groups let's fast forward to the 1950s and 60s which are often thought of as a golden age for Lebanon Beirut which is nicknamed The Paris of the Middle East really described as a hub of Commerce and tourism however this period came to a sudden end in 1975 when tensions between lebanon's different religious ethnic and political groups overflowed into a Civil War which was made even more complicated by interference from the surrounding countries so over the next 15 years more than a hundred thousand people were all killed and almost a million were displaced the 1990s and the 2000s were filled with further challenges as Lebanon tried to rebuild while facing Syrian occupation conflict with Israel and intense political turmoil recent years have carried many more challenges such as managing an overflow of Syrian refugees difficulties governing the various religious and political factions a major major financial crisis as well as a massive accidental explosion in the capital city which you might remember from the news all of these factors have led to a big Exodus of people leaving the country especially among young people today there are more Lebanese people on the global diaspora and within Lebanon itself this massive economic crisis going on alone has really paralyzed the financial system many citizens aren't able to access their savings and inflation rates are over 180 percent it's really impossible to not highlight this when speaking of Lebanon but we're really going to try to focus on the history and the people of this beautiful country so after biblos we headed back home to get ready because that night we're invited to a birthday party by the family we're staying with we were celebrating a Grandma's 70th birthday but trust me what I mean this was by no means a chill occasion the rumors are true the Lebanese party like no no they all will truly take this kind of party over any event in New York City everyone was so kind and welcoming and excited to teach us random Americans how to join in on their dances is this hands down one of our absolute best nights of the trip so far next up we're making it to the gem of Lebanon Beirut the city is filled with contradictions and it's the seat of the government it's a cultural Hub very rich with deep history that continues to flourish despite how much it's been put to the test with minutes of arriving you'll see everything from g-wagons parked next to buggies mosques situated next to Cathedrals and old city charm along with crumbling colonial buildings situated across from massive skyscrapers and even though the blast was over two years ago its impact still really looms all over the city everyone we've talked to here has their own tragic story about that day I will say today the streets of Beirut feel far more quiet than they did when I was here many years ago flooring the city today we've seen a good amount of the northern Coastal part of Lebanon so far but now we're finally in the epicenter the biggest city the capital right now we're really excited because we're headed to a shop called Sarah's bag to meet Sarah herself who's a really badass businesswoman so like I said today we're meeting Sarah which I am so excited about she has this incredible Lebanese designer who actually started this company 20 years ago as a social project to train and provide jobs for female prisoners in Lebanon since then it's expanded into this vibrant fashion house that now employs over 200 local women as skilled Artisans many of whom are prisoners or ex-prisoners so just to tell you how you work it's um actually we we do the design and the girls who execute the designs are women either comes out of the prison and we worked with for a long time all her community to work with us we work with over 200 women and they all work in different classes that are very specific to the vegetarian this is the way to continue working with the classroom because they use their money to for their families for their Library and I really believe that a nice piece should be worn and kept and different to your daughter especially the pieces that have at work on this Earth that can put their heart and thoughts in it and you can see the progress like you can see a woman that is broken and then you see her working and empowered and making other women work like instead of being looked down on and that she's an ex-presiler now she comes to the Village she supplies the work to all her community so directly she's somebody else and they looked at her in a different way yeah mom said the action that we launched this season is The Oasis collection and it has a lot of Palms The Oasis collection symbolizes hope and although everything's happening this is hoping that we'd be able to make it through I do a lot of prints that are specific to Lebanon like this this says Beirut never dies after the plastic everybody wanted to support us because we know this whole place was built I agree with us all these all these were out everything was destroyed seeing everything destroyed was really really painful because you know as his first country doing now what should I do that I do handbags still but then you see the support I had so much Support also from the girls working with me they would call me it's not the moment and you know what we would come we will kill him so I was particularly inspired with Sarah about how she combined her business skill sets with her inherent creative and stylistic guy to create this company I also think it's really special how these bags keep ancient artisanal techniques alive and it feels like you're carrying a little reminder of lebanon's beauty around with you oh she's faced barriers as a woman in business she's used her education her creativity her skill sets and her passion for sustainability to uplift these other Lebanese women through Rehabilitation empowerment right now we are like half a mile away from the original glass site everyone is connected looks back at that date as like what a lot of things shifted for unfortunately everyone we've met here in Lebanon it's come up at some point because it's such a recent catastropriate only two years ago and either people lost their home loved ones or changed their outlook on this city so very intense to see in person walking around one city yeah you're getting a huge mix of like class disparity and architecture and religion and you can see the influences of like French colonization the Civil War and the blast the economic recession overall it's still really Charming you can see like the perseverance here it's gorgeous to explore because of that massive mix it's such an interesting region you have a blown out building here this right next door the interesting juxtapositions found in Lebanon we have the mosque we have a church we have some somewhat Colonial architecture over there we have ancient Roman ruins just hanging out a Christian church again and then over here we have the Martyr Square trip to Tripoli and Tripoli is lebanon's second largest city it has a bit of a tricky pass and unfortunately it has a reputation of poverty and conflict the city was a hot spot for violence in the Civil War that I've mentioned and the instability has continued while this current situation is very daunting Tripoli does have a really impressive history which we want to highlight for centuries at outshine Beirut as the star of Lebanon it was the primary Port City for the entire surrounding region so it was home to massive exchanges of goods and arts and culture you name it it still boasts really stunning architecture ranging from mosques to Crusader castles to ancient bath houses we decided to meet up with a tour guide here in Tripoli so our day focused on this really interesting history we learned that Tripoli for one has the most remaining ma'am look in the world or a kind of medieval Egyptian architecture almost second only the Cairo itself we also got to explore several of tripley's famous hamams or public bath houses that can date back to the 1300s which is crazy it was so fascinating to think about all the lives that have stepped foot in the city long before we had the chance to visit hello from Tripoli we're actually with working with a guy and a local guide to show us around which I think is great if you're in a different country who knows the history yeah most local people so she was saying like the ancient trainers would come through because Lebanon was like a main trading area and this is where they would stay so you have the big watering section here for the horses the camels and then they'd stay up in these rooms up in here and now you can still do some shopping so I think we should go check it out at all she had some soap yeah that's nice which is a little vacay Village favorite visiting Lebanon was such a special experience for being staged to share together well I felt like our hearts broke again again hearing about people's struggles amidst the instability and the economic disaster I was also so constantly inspired by the resilience and the creativity all around me and was especially touched by the endless warmth and Hospitality truly the Lebanese are some of the most hospitable and fun people I've ever met I really enjoyed hearing Sarah's story in particular especially as she's breaking these barriers in business and fashion through empowering these underprivileged women throughout Lebanon similar to the situation many countries across Middle East recent instability has actually kind of created an opportunity for old Dynamics to finally shift young people especially women will really be crucial in determining the future of this beautiful country and I sincerely hope to be able to see it again in the meantime we're now off to the North African portion of this trip and we're headed to Tunis Tunisia