On Christmas Eve I flew from London to Beirut on BA and landed during a spectacular thunderstorm. I managed to get in for free after buying a visa at the airport bank for $18, the immigration man said it's free today, go, and get your money back, so we did! By total coincidence, the next morning the first person I saw at breakfast was Katerina, a fellow Globetrotter from London!

I was part of an organised tour of the Lebanon and there were 10 of us. We left Beirut on Xmas day and headed south via the Corniche to the port city of Sidon. On the way we passed near to the sports complex behind which there are massive Shatila and Shabra Palestinian refugee camps, where the massacres in the 1980's happened. In Sidon we visited the Caravanserai where there is a collection of photographs showing the hours leading up to and the assassination of president Hariri in February 2005; the devastation from the 350kg car bomb has to be seen to be believed.

Also in Sidon we saw the Crusader castle which is reached by a stone bridge across the sea. The castle is well preserved and there are lots of towers and ramparts to explore, though at lower levels of the castle we had to avoid the massive waves that were breaking over the castle. In Sidon we also visited, the market and the soap museum, which is quite interesting.

Our next stop was the drive up into the Chouf mountains to Deir el Qamar to our Auberge, a lovely place to stay run by an eccentric old French lady who had a roaring log fire, just as well as it was very cold. Our Christmas dinner was a meze: loads of meat and bread, etc, very nice, and no sheep's eye balls to be seen. (My mother had predicted a Christmas dinner of sheep's eye balls)!

We had planned to go walking in the Cedar forest, but the rain in Beirut had been 3ft of snow in the mountains so that was abandoned. The snowy trip over the mountains into the Bekaa valley was precarious and our driver had to be careful not to hit parked vehicles that you couldn't see as they were buried in snow. On the other side of the mountains we visited the Ummayad ruins at Anjar which borders Syria, but again it was raining, so we saw the main buildings and temples, but it was too cold too really take our time, so after a chicken shawarma and chips it was up into “Hezbollahville”, aka Baalbeck, famous for its fantastic ruins.

Our hotel was right opposite the ruins, and pretty spectacular they are too. We had a local guide to take us round, as Baalbeck is quite a big place, and also home to Hezbolah. There were yellow signs showing a fist with a Kalashnikov all over the place and local people try to sell you Hezbolah flags and t-shirts and there are people collecting for the cause. I had a wander around Baalbeck in the evening, a nice place and despite those that run it, it was not in the least threatening, bought some sweets off an ex-Australian Lebanese who called me “mate”!

We were supposed to go straight to the Qadisha valley from Baalbeck, but because of the holiday weekend we had not visited Beit Eddin, due to it being Christmas day on the Sunday and the day off for public building employees on the Monday. Beit Eddin is a fantastic palace, very much in the style of the Alhambra in Granada, lovely architecture, beautiful fountains and gardens. We had to make quite a detour to this, but it was well worth it, we then skirted back around Beirut and then up to Byblos on the coast.

Byblos or Jbail to give it its proper name has some nice Roman ruins and a castle. It was also where our guide Nasim lives so as there were only 10 of us we went round his house for tea and cakes with his sister and Father, which was nice. During that night the PFLP (Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine) lobbed a couple of Katusha rockets over the border into Israel, a while later 30 miles south of us the Israeli air force bombed a Palestinian camp in South Beirut, we heard “something” in the night but didn't find out what had happened until the next morning.

Went next to Tripoli, a lovely old city by the sea, fantastic castle to clamber over, ramparts giving great views with sheer drops off the side, in Europe there would be “Don't climb the ramparts” signs and a huge big fence to stop you, not in Lebanon, go where you like and we did.

Then went down into the market great fun eating hot bread straight from the bakers. We got into the big mosque too. I love the architecture of these places, the girls with us were given all covering pink robes, looked like a day out for the KKK or a bunch of druids at the Solstice. Then we drove into the mountains to Bcharre, home to the writer/painter Gibran. His stuff is not my kind of thing and there's no chance of it ever touring Saudi Arabia or Iran as nobody in his pictures has a stitch on and as for what they are getting up to…..After a quick look round we came out and built a snowman and had a snowball fight!

We spent the night in an Hermitage called St Elysee, whose back wall is actually the rock of the mountain behind. To get to the place we had to go down a steep mountain road that was a sheet of ice – which was exhilarating, but the next day we had to come out by the same way and ended up using snow chains and taking runs at bends to get round them. We were also supposed to do a walk here, but were forewarned about the 12 inches of mud and 2 ft of snow by another group that had tried the walk and had to give up. Instead we went to Byblos for lunch and then down to Jeita Grotto, a fantastic series of caves which were brilliant. After the caves we went to Jounie and got the cable car and funicular up to the top of the hill behind the town, which has a giant statue of the Virgin Mary, but we just made it for sunset.

We finished up in Beirut and first visited the famous Corniche that runs by the sea, the place to be seen in the 1970's but now a bit tatty. Then down to Martyrs square which is the start of the “Green Line” that divided east and west Beirut during the war. The buildings directly on the line have been rebuilt or restored, but you only have to go a street or so east or west to find the evidence of 15 years of war.

Beirut is on an extremely high state of alert. There are tanks and armed police and army all over the place – they are expecting something to happen. The bars and clubs in the city that last year were packed have been cancelling New Years eve parties as nobody is buying tickets. The city dwellers do not want to be in a place with a large crowd that would be a target for the next bomb. But having said that Beirut is a nice place, the people are extremely welcoming, there are lovely shops and cafes and I'm really glad to have visited.