Things to Do in Beirut in March

Paragliding over Jounieh Bay launches you from the ridgeline above the town of Jounieh, roughly twenty minutes north of central Beirut. Within seconds the Mediterranean opens below in a sheet of hammered silver and deep teal. The tandem flight carries you over the red-roofed houses of Jounieh, the crescent-shaped bay curving beneath your feet, with the scent of pine resin and salt rising on the thermals. On clear March mornings, the snow-capped peaks of Mount Lebanon stand sharp to the east while the coastline stretches south toward Beirut's hazy skyline. Two worlds visible in a single slow turn.

The Pigeon Rocks at Raouche are two massive limestone arches standing in the sea just off Beirut's western shoreline, sculpted by millennia of salt spray and winter storms into forms that look almost deliberate. A small boat ride takes you through the archways and around the rocks' base, where the water shifts from pale turquoise in the shallows to a deep indigo where the seafloor drops away. You hear the slap of waves echoing inside the arches. You feel the cool mist off the rocks on your skin. If you look up, you may spot the silhouettes of pigeons, the rocks' namesake residents, wheeling against the sky above the cliffs.

This cooking class in Beirut pairs you with a home cook named Amal in a residential kitchen, not a staged studio, where the counters are scarred from years of actual use and the spice jars are half-empty because they are real. You will roll grape leaves until your fingers are stained green, pound garlic and salt into a paste for toum so pungent your eyes water, and pull kibbeh from the oven with a crackling crust that shatters at the first tap of a spoon. The flavours of Beirut's home cooking, the sour edge of sumac, the nuttiness of toasted pine nuts, the silky weight of tahini, are harder to find in restaurants than you might expect. This is where you learn to reproduce them.

The Qadisha Valley is a deep gorge cut into the mountains northeast of Beirut, its walls terraced with ancient monasteries built directly into the rock face. Some are still inhabited by monks who keep beeswax candles burning in chapels carved from the cliff. The drive from Beirut climbs through villages where the air sharpens with altitude and the smell of cedar and cold stone replaces the coastal salt. Bcharri, the town perched at the valley's head, is the birthplace of Khalil Gibran. The remaining Cedars of God, a grove of the ancient trees that once covered these mountains, stand gnarled and enormous, their bark rough and furrowed under your hand, exuding a resinous sweetness that clings to your clothes long after you leave.

This paragliding operation launches from the hills above the Lebanese coast and has a distinct flight profile from the Jounieh Bay route. The launch site and flight path differ, giving you a wider sweep of the coastline and, depending on conditions, a longer time aloft. The sensation of stepping off the hillside into open air never loses its edge. The ground drops away. The wind fills the canopy with a sharp crack. Then silence except for the rustle of the harness straps and the faint hiss of air over fabric. Below, the terraced hillsides give way to the coastal strip, where the pale sand and dark rock of Lebanon's shore draw a jagged line against water so blue it looks lit from beneath.

This small group tour packs three of Lebanon's defining sites into a single day out of Beirut, and the sequence matters. You descend first into Jeita Grotto, where the underground river has carved cathedral-scale chambers hung with stalactites that drip in the silence, the air cool and mineral-sharp, the only sound the echo of water striking limestone pools. Then you ascend by cable car to Harissa, where the colossal statue of Our Lady of Lebanon stands on a hilltop overlooking the bay. The wind up here is brisk in March, carrying the faint taste of salt from the coast far below. Finally, Byblos: one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, its Crusader castle built atop Phoenician foundations, its old souk a warren of stone-flagged alleys where you can run your fingers along walls that were already ancient when Rome was young.