All the Beirut news.

Summer here ends on September 1st, when the Lebanese 'en masse' stop going to the beach, and everywhere else in the world it ends on September 22nd with the beginning of fall. But for the die-hard Dutch (used to cold summers) in Lebanon, the summer ends when they can no longer go to the beach.
And it is getting there. The tents are dismantled, the chairs stacked, and the food counter closed. The kiddie pool no longer fills up, and you may now drown in the pool; the life guards have gone home.
Even for the Dutch in Lebanon, the summer of 2008 is slowly coming to an end.
What a pity. It was a good summer.
The Die-Hard Dutch are the only ones in the pool. At a mere 23C, Lebanese don’t do ‘beach’. We’ll keep in going on till we get blown of the beach by a November storm.
The tents are dismantled, the chairs stacked, the life guards have gone home. Dancing on the beach; There are still a few Lebanese that will keep coming for a while, but they come for the company rather than the pool. They bring in their own entertainment.
The kiddie pool will remain empty until end of May, 2009. It’s a long wait until next summer. Sigh