5-Day Lebanon Cultural Tour with Baalbek, Byblos and the Cedars

Land in Beirut and meet your guide. The city is twenty minutes from the airport, and the sea is immediate. Head into the National Museum for the finest Phoenician collection in existence, from Byblos gold to the sarcophagus of King Ahiram, whose lid carries one of the earliest alphabetic inscriptions ever found.

At sunset, pause at the Pigeon Rocks off Raouché, then settle in for a first long mezze in Gemmayzeh - consider it orientation.

Travel north out of the city to the Jeita Grotto: cathedral chambers of crystal above, and a silent boat on the underground river below. Continue up by cable car to Harissa for the great white Lady of Lebanon and the full sweep of the bay.

Then carry on to Byblos, seven thousand years old and wearing it lightly. Explore Phoenician ramparts, the Crusader keep, and the little harbour that exported both cedar and the alphabet, then stop for lunch where the fishing boats tie up.

Cross east over the Mount Lebanon range into the Beqaa Valley. First comes the Umayyad city of Anjar, a perfect grid of arcades from Islam's first dynasty.

Then continue to Baalbek: the hexagonal court, the great altar platform built on trilithon stones of eight hundred tonnes, Jupiter's six colossal columns, and the near-perfect Temple of Bacchus - the Roman Empire at maximum ambition.

On the way home, enjoy a Beqaa vineyard tasting. The valley has made wine for five thousand years, and it shows.

Drive up the coast and into the high north to the Cedars of God at two thousand metres, the last ancient grove of the tree on Lebanon's flag. Walk beneath elders that were seedlings when Byblos traded with Egypt.

Continue along the rim of the Qadisha Valley, with its rock-cut monasteries clinging to the cliffs, then on to Bcharre and the Gibran Museum in its hillside hermitage.

Pause for mountain trout and arak at lunch, then return to Beirut as the peaks go pink.

Travel south down the Phoenician coast. In Sidon, the Sea Castle stands in the water on its stone causeway; behind it lie the old souks and the soap museum's fragrant vaults.

Then continue to Tyre, once master of the Mediterranean: the colonnaded avenue running into the sea, the vast hippodrome where twenty thousand watched the chariots, and a last seafood lunch by a harbour that has worked for three millennia.

Return north to Beirut for the airport, or stay on - many do.