Good Morning Beirut 🌈

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Woke up to this uplifting view this morning! When will we learn to live in harmonious diversity just like this rainbow…? I’m hoping 2015 is the year! Let’s all make it one of our new year resolutions to become more tolerant and contribute in any way we can to an atmosphere of love and life!

Hamra & other Colors

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With its hilarious knock-offs (think Canal street with a Lebanese touch), to fruit colors that will knock you off your feet, to colorful characters of all ages (think old men sipping Turkish coffee & smoking shisha at local cafés with the colorful Hamra-shopping local fashionista walking by) Hamra street (Hamra means in English the red one) may be shunned today by the Beirut fashion snobs as a destination for the masses, but I certainly recommend a stroll through it to tourists as a way to get a more local feel of west Beirut and a taste of a stretch that has not wavered throughout all the Lebanese turmoil as one of Beirut’s main commercial streets. You’ll note that there is an efforts being made to bring back some lost glory and prominence to Hamra and that it certainly looks nothing like its dodgy depiction in Homeland.

Athens OOTD 🐟

Hopped to Athens for a couple of days on our way home for Christmas and faithful to our ‘take the kids everywhere with you’ survival policy we climbed all the way up to the Acropolis area with them 🏆 which was tiring but still rewarding and under control… except things started getting more complicated when we were forced to steer away from our plans as we tried to get back to our hotel by the parliament and it turned out that the whole area was closed off for a protest… We took the advice of a random cab driver who drove us through the Castella area and into Mikrolimano to a restaurant of his choice by the Aegean Sea…here our girls truly shined today as (despite all our policing) they went 20 fingers plunging into the lovely Greek oily fish… the highlight of course was to follow when I turned to look at my youngest, who was starring at me with her big guilty-looking eyes and in an instant she sneezed all her purée on my OOTD (luckily I had taken those pics before!) Things got back to the cheery side however as we had a very entertaining cab ride back to our hotel and through the Plaka area with a really funny local who seemed very at ease with the screaming kids saying he had 3 kids of his own that fill his life and stress him out and then he went on a cab-ride-long monologue on the worsening economic situation wrapped up with the zinger: “my wife used to call me to tell me I love you and now she just calls me to say: “I
want foulous!” (this means money in Arabic as he wanted to impress us with his language skills…lol) Now we’re back at the hotel and the protest in front of parliament has been replaced with a music concert surrounded by glittering Christmas trees… 5 more days to Christmas!!!

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SPF💯

I’m skipping the sun ☀️ tanning 👙today and having fresh carrot juice to boost that beach skin glow ✨ Carrots are rich in beta carotene a yellow/orange pigment that gives warmth to skin color. Think cancer free + healthy and head to the juice bar!

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The Maldives Mosaic

An enchanting collection of islands in the Indian Ocean balancing by virtue of its location and history striking tropical beauty and a devotion to religious spirituality.

Vacationing here is a speedboat trip to the senses: from dipping in the crystal clear turquoise ocean to touching the soft white sandy beaches to savoring the delicious Indian inspired food to relaxing to the healing scent of coconut oil during a traditional Asian massage to hearing the Friday call to prayer in Arabic from a small local island next to the resort… A humble traditional country drizzled by luxury resorts attracting the world to dots barely visible on the world map… The many contrasts invite you to relax, reflect and be inspired…

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