Libyan Memories - Part Two: Tripoli and the Western Interior - IgoUgo Libya Journal

National Museum

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Attraction | "A Fine Set of Naked Old Libyans"

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On our first morning in Tripoli we went to visit the national museum on the edge of the Old City. The museum is housed in a wing of the Red Castle – an old building that was once an armoury but was converted to a museum in 1919 by the Italians who were fond of promoting the glories of Ancient Rome.Our bus dropped us off in Green Square just outside the building and we met the guide who'd been booked to take us around. I believe that it's a condition of entry that foreign tourists have to visit with an official accredited tour guide and in our case, this was a little man with more knowledge than was sometimes entirely necessary.All bags must be deposited at the cloakroom. I'm no...Read More

On our first morning in Tripoli we went to visit the national museum on the edge of the Old City. The museum is housed in a wing of the Red Castle – an old building that was once an armoury but was converted to a museum in 1919 by the Italians who were fond of promoting the glories of Ancient Rome.

Our bus dropped us off in Green Square just outside the building and we met the guide who'd been booked to take us around. I believe that it's a condition of entry that foreign tourists have to visit with an official accredited tour guide and in our case, this was a little man with more knowledge than was sometimes entirely necessary.

All bags must be deposited at the cloakroom. I'm not sure if they think we'll somehow walk out with a two thousand year old 2 ton statue tucked in a backpack, or if they just don't want anyone to turn round quickly and knock something valuable, but we'd been warned and left all non-essential items on the bus. We passed through a security gate and waited whilst our guide picked up the tickets, leaving us time to browse the items in the bookstore.

Entering the museum, the first room offers a mix of treasures that seemed to have been picked out for special attention as particularly fine examples. On one wall our attention was drawn to a spectacular 1st Century mosaic that had been lifted from the floor of one of the many ancient buildings of Libya. It featured a wide range of very intricately crafted fish and sea-food; king prawns with every whisker and leg carefully recreated, cuttlefish almost throbbing on the wall, a wide variety of different fish and a rather evil-looking eel or two. To the other side of the room stood a tall stone tomb with an underground chamber for the body and a tall arch above, looking not unlike the Albert Memorial in London. The next room contained two unexpected items – the first a VW Beetle that belonged to Colonel Gaddafi before he became the country's leader and the other a sand-buggy also used by him. Set amongst the ancient relics in the rest of the museum, these were a timely reminder of who's in charge in Libya.

After the Gaddafi Garage exhibits the museum then progresses chronologically through over 250,000 years of history. Our guide was dismissive of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic exhibits. In his slightly plumy old-school English, he appealed for our support. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I crave your indulgence for I despise the Stone Age and implore you to come with me instead to the Greco-Roman era". How could you say no?

And so we bypassed a big chunk of history to plunge in amongst the era that Libya is arguably most famous for. I hadn't done my homework or any pre-reading so I was a little out of my depth. I muddle my Greeks and Romans quite shamefully for someone who did quite well at Latin in school. Our guide began to extol the virtues of every single lump of marble in the hall. Not just a little, but in great detail. My mind started to wander. I tried; I really tried, but there comes a time when I the 'It's my holiday, I'm not on a school trip' rebellion kicks in and I have to wander off. I had a good excuse with my ears so blocked from a bad cold that I could barely hear what he was saying. I mused on the irony of a room full of naked statues in a country where the hotel swimming pools are open to men and women on different days.

A camera's a good excuse to run away so I used it to the full. However, not everything passed over my head and quite a few things I'd need later in the week sunk into my resistant brain. I learned some of the typical characters we'd see in the sites as we travelled around the country; the Three Graces, Persephone seen with and without a face depending on whether she was in the underworld or the world above, Athena with her owl, and many and varied emperors, gods and characters from mythology.

There were several large school groups going round the museum, laughing, joking and pretty much ignoring the exhibits. Our guide explained his sadness at their indifference, telling us that none of this history is taught in Libyan schools. He dropped his voice, looking over his shoulder and saying "We are not free to speak of these things". Finally as we finished the Greco-Roman rooms we were released into the early Christian times of the Byzantine Empire and our guide was happy to let us go. After the joys of Byzantium, the Islamic era followed and eventually the museum brought us up to present times. With rooms laid out to show how different tribes live in Libya, it was clear that Gaddafi's love of the village and nomadic life shone through in the influences of the museum. The man who tried to pitch a tent in Central Park when visiting the United Nations, abhors the city living ideal and thinks everyone should go back to more natural nomadic ways of life.

Once our allotted time for independent wandering about was over, we met back in the room with Gaddafi's cars and then headed back to the book shop where my husband and I picked up a couple of sheets of stamps. We have a bit of a weakness of political philately and bought two rather garish sheets commemorating 'American Aggression' for 12 dinars ($9/£6 approx). They've been framed since we got home and are hanging in the downstairs toilet along with similar anti-American stamps from Iran. It's always good to have something to think about on the loo!

I think I'm probably spoiled by having access to the British Museum where items of this quality aren't so rare as they might be elsewhere. Undoubtedly if Greco-Roman history is your thing, the exhibits in this museum are some of the best you'll find and in a country that's filled with well preserved sites of that era, the best is obviously going to be something special. If you're not so well versed in the subject, it's a good place for a quick introduction but try not to get lumbered with an 'expert' guide who wants to tell you EVERYTHING about every statue in the room.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 11, 2010

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Gurgi Mosque

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Attraction | "Convert, Pirate and Mosque Builder - Mustafa Gurgi"

Mustapha Gurgi Mosque Photo - Gurgi Mosque, Tripoli, Libya

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Although I am not a religious person, I do love visiting religious buildings; churches, mosques, synagogues, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh temples and even pagan sites all have the capability to move me deeply. But if pushed to choose just one of the world's great religions whose buildings shine out ahead of the rest for me, I would have to put my vote in the box marked 'mosques'. This is not based only on familiarity because I've spent more time in churches by far, and similar amounts of time in Buddhist and Hindu temples, but there's something about the exuberance and joy in the decoration of a good mosque that pushes my delight buttons almost every time. Whilst it's undoubtedly true to say that some mos...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on May 1, 2010

Gurgi Mosque
Old City
Tripoli, Libya

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Abiya Seafood Restaurant

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Restaurant | "In Which I See-food and I Eat it!"

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After a morning in the National Museum followed by a quick look at the Marcus Aurelius Arch and the Gurgi Mosque, we'd all worked up quite a hunger and were ready to go and hunt down some lunch. We'd already done a quick whiz around the Old City with our tour leader pointing out things as we sped past rather quickly. As we passed down one street he pointed out two restaurants and claimed the second was 'the best place in the city for cheap seafood'. I made a mental note to come back and find out if it was true before we shot past and deeper into the souk.The group split up to go in search of lunch with some heading off to Green Square for a sandwich, others hunting for their own thing, and...Read More

After a morning in the National Museum followed by a quick look at the Marcus Aurelius Arch and the Gurgi Mosque, we'd all worked up quite a hunger and were ready to go and hunt down some lunch. We'd already done a quick whiz around the Old City with our tour leader pointing out things as we sped past rather quickly. As we passed down one street he pointed out two restaurants and claimed the second was 'the best place in the city for cheap seafood'. I made a mental note to come back and find out if it was true before we shot past and deeper into the souk.

The group split up to go in search of lunch with some heading off to Green Square for a sandwich, others hunting for their own thing, and five of us deciding to head back and see if we could find the seafood restaurant. I'd taken more notice than I realised on the matter of how to get there. I doubt an address would help you even if I had one so here are the instructions. First find the Ottoman clock tower and stand with the museum behind you and the road to the Marcus Aurelius arch ahead of you. Take the small alleyway on the left at the side of the clock tower to the first junction and then turn right. The restaurant is on the left after about 50 meters. It's called the Abiya and you enter up a flight of steps. It's nothing fancy to look at so don't panic and think you're in the wrong place.

We headed up the stairs and into the restaurant. There's a small bar area (well that's a bit of a misnomer in an alcohol free country but there was a counter and a few tables) where we were met by a waiter who guided us into the small dining room set with no more than eight or ten tables. The tables had tiled tops and we sat on benches covered with rugs. The ceiling was bare wood and the white walls were decorated with old black and white photos and rough-looking ethnic rugs. A small plastic laminated menu was put in front of us which was fortunately in both Arabic and English and the waiter took our orders for drinks. We weren't too sure what to make of the menu - it not being very clear which dishes were starters and which main courses, but that didn't matter since the waiters were going to give us what they thought we should have regardless. We weren't asked what we wanted at all until about half way through the meal - instead things just started to appear on the table in front of us. The other diners were all local people and we were the only party of tourists in that day.

The first food to arrive at the table was a basket of bread with long pieces of baguette-style crispy bread. The waiter then returned with small bowls of fish soup, rich and smoky in flavour and thickened with couscous. I dipped my bread in to make sure I didn’t miss even a small drop of the soup. Next to follow was a small bowl of salad consisting of chopped tomato and cucumber with some herbs and a second small dish of octopus salad. I'm a sucker for a good bit of tentacle so I really enjoyed the soft chewy pieces of octopus although some of my dining companions were raising their eyebrows at the chunks of sucker.

With the bread, soup and salads all polished off, I was excited to see what would happen next. The waiter came back and brought the menus again and asked what we wanted. The main choice was between fish with couscous, fish with rice or with spaghetti and the couscous could be served as mild or spicy varieties. I opted for the spicy couscous whilst the rest of the table split between the other options and one person tried to get 'fish and chips' after seeing it at another table but gave up when he couldn’t' make himself understood.

I expected to eat a lot of couscous in Libya which would have been fine since it's a dish I really enjoy unless I get it twice a day for a fortnight. Unfortunately, the couscous at the Abiya turned out to be the only full dish of couscous I got all week. I did manage to steal a few spoonfuls off someone else at one meal but other than that, my couscous ambitions were rather disappointed. Fortunately, since this was to be my only couscous, it was a good thing that it was excellent. The level of spices was good - I like my food to come with a kick and am generally disappointed by North African dishes because they are too mild. Perched on top of the couscous was a large piece of firm white fish, decorated with a small amount of rich juicy tomato sauce. The fish was a bit bony but the bones were large and easy to remove and gave me no problems. I'm ashamed to say I ate every last scrap of my meal and they could probably have used the bowls again without washing them as I'd left absolutely nothing.

The price for bread, soup, salads, fish couscous and a can of Diet Coke was (from memory) 12 or 14 dinars per person (about £6-7 pr $9 to 11). The fish dish alone would have been about half that amount and I thought the meal was very good value. Some people might find it annoying to be given no choice about starters and soup but I enjoyed all the dishes served and loved not having to take responsibility for being such a pig. After all, it would have been rude to have said 'No'! Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on May 1, 2010

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Qasr Al Haj Granary

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Attraction | "An Unexpectedly Bizarre Building"

The Granary Qsar al Haj Photo - Libya, Africa

Quote:

After lunch in Tripoli we met up with the rest of our tour group just outside the National Museum to start our tour of Libya. Our main bus had been despatched to drive to Benghazi and meet us there the next day so we were loaned a spare bus, almost entirely indistinguishable from the first one except for the presence of a slightly different driver. We also at this point acquired our 'Security Man'. It was a mystery throughout our trip why we needed Mohammed the Security Man and whether he was there to protect us from Libya or to protect Libya from us. He didn't give the impression of being very capable of either role, and we never were sure if he spoke or understood English. However his presence in hi...Read More

After lunch in Tripoli we met up with the rest of our tour group just outside the National Museum to start our tour of Libya. Our main bus had been despatched to drive to Benghazi and meet us there the next day so we were loaned a spare bus, almost entirely indistinguishable from the first one except for the presence of a slightly different driver. We also at this point acquired our 'Security Man'. It was a mystery throughout our trip why we needed Mohammed the Security Man and whether he was there to protect us from Libya or to protect Libya from us. He didn't give the impression of being very capable of either role, and we never were sure if he spoke or understood English. However his presence in his gingery brown leather jacket with the bulging inner pocket was intended to reassure someone that everything was all right with the world. He settled in at the front of the bus with the driver and we all grabbed seats in the back.

When I was a student I spent a summer travelling around North America on Greyhound buses. I learned the art of sleeping in vehicles because I never knew what sort of disastrous hovel I might be spending the night in. The skill stays with me to this day. No sooner does an engine fire up than I start to drop off. For this reason I find it very difficult to tell you how long it took to get to Qasr Al Haj or how far it was from Tripoli other than '50 pages of quite a good book and a long snooze'. Apparently it's about 230 km but Libya has really good roads so you'll barely notice them passing by. On the way we were briefly woken by the tour guide telling us we were passing through a village that's allegedly in the Guinness (some irony in an alcohol free land) Book of World Records for recording the highest ever temperatures which was a little hard to believe since the weather was decidedly grey and drizzly outside.

Due to my tendency to snooze and my mistake of neither buying a guide book nor printing off the tour itinerary, a lot of things on this trip did rather sneak up on me unexpectedly. As my husband shook me awake a couple of minutes before we arrived, I shrugged and grunted unappreciatively. "What did you wake me for? A Granary? You can't be serious" but he poked me again until I grabbed my camera and grudgingly got off the bus.

Let's be honest, would you get excited by being told you're going to a granary? Mostly the answer would be "No" although there is a lovely one in Fez or Meknes or some such place in Morocco that I really enjoyed a few years ago. What if I told you it was 800 years old? Yes, that sounds a bit more interesting.

As I stepped out of the bus, the rain stopped and the sun burst out from behind a cloud. In front of me rising like a massive cruise ship in the middle of the ocean (but brown and with no sea obviously) was an enormous round building. Imagine the Coliseum in Rome but covered in red mud and you'll get a rough idea.

Inside things got even more bizarre. The construction was a large ring shaped building - I work in the bakery industry, so I confess I thought 'Donut'. It's a giant red stone donut! It looked like something from the Star Wars village crossed with a funky student hall of residence. There were dozens of roughly shaped door ways - some with, most without wooden doors. In total there are 104 separate chambers. I didn't count them, I looked it up when I got home and learned that this is apparently the same as the number of chapters in the Koran. Mind you, that might be a complete lie as another site claims there are 114. Personally I don't think it matters. It looked like a collection of little bedsits or some kind of defensive castle. I imagined early American settlers in their wagons forming a ring to defend against marauding tribes of natives hell-bent on stealing their horses - but much much bigger. This would make a great fortress.

But hang on a minute - fortress, student dorm, what was I thinking of. This was nothing of the type. Each of the little 'rooms' was the storage space of one family from the ancient village. Today the village is small with few families but way back in time, this granary stored and protected the food and provisions of a large settlement. And because many of the people were semi-nomadic and didn't stay in one place all the time, they needed a secure place to leave their grain and their valuables whilst they went off wandering. Looking through the doors there were large amphoras and storage bins. Wooden posts stuck out of the walls on the upper levels for the village folk to hoist their goodies up to the higher levels for storage. A few very rough looking ladders were propped around the walls.

A single set of carved steps led up to the upper level of the granary. I went straight up knowing my husband would freak and imagine me falling off the moment he saw me. Only when I stood at the top did I take in the fact that it was very rough underfoot and there was nothing to stop me stepping straight off the edge and straight into the hospital. It was a health and safety nightmare of the sort that has your holiday insurance company shaking their heads and pointing out the clause on page 4 of the policy that says you aren't supposed to do anything REALLY stupid. From the top I couldn't actually look out over the walls but I could see the peaks of mountains in the distance and more importantly I could see that getting down might be tougher than getting up had been.

The central space inside the granary is large and there's very little in there. The research I've managed to do since I got home suggests that this might have been used as a market place for people to trade their goods, and gave ample space for everyone to hide inside in the event of any need to defend themselves. Aside from the one door on the outside, it's a pretty impenetrable looking place. There are a few odd stones that looked like millstones and a few old pots.

In case you are wondering, there's absolutely nothing anywhere near Qasr al Haj. There's nowhere to stay, nowhere to eat and I doubt you'll find a public toilet within an hour. Your best chance of seeing it will be on some kind of organised tour - which as luck would have it, is probably the only way that the Libyan authorities will let you into the country, so it's not too much of a problem Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 30, 2010

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Troglodyte Time

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Troglodyte - it's a lovely word that brings to mind a very primitive way of life. It trips off the tongue very nicely, filling your mouth with a sense that this is a word to be respected. But when push comes to shove, for all the beauty and intrigue of the word and all the thoughts of past times, it's just a fancy word for someone who lives underground or in a cave. When I read the itinerary for our week long tour of Libya I was still quite excited about the idea of staying in a 'Troglodyte Lodge'. I've been to Cappadocia in Turkey, probably one of the most impressive places for seeing troglodyte dwellings and cave churches and other buildings carved out of the rock so my expectations were based on wh...Read More

Troglodyte - it's a lovely word that brings to mind a very primitive way of life. It trips off the tongue very nicely, filling your mouth with a sense that this is a word to be respected. But when push comes to shove, for all the beauty and intrigue of the word and all the thoughts of past times, it's just a fancy word for someone who lives underground or in a cave. When I read the itinerary for our week long tour of Libya I was still quite excited about the idea of staying in a 'Troglodyte Lodge'. I've been to Cappadocia in Turkey, probably one of the most impressive places for seeing troglodyte dwellings and cave churches and other buildings carved out of the rock so my expectations were based on what I'd seen there. The reality of the Libyan troglodyte experience was a bit of a disappointment.

We spent most of the afternoon driving inland from Tripoli stopping only to see the granary at Qasr al Haj. I don't entirely know where we were since the trip itinerary is very vague on the location but by checking the internet for photos of a troglodyte lodge which appears to be the same one we stayed at, I suspect it was somewhere near to Rayehbet.

Our bus pulled up in a small village at the end of the afternoon. There was nothing immediately visible that suggested we'd reached our destination. A large modern house was built on the roadside and we were told that this was where the family who owned the lodge now lived. Clearly they'd given up living underground in favour of running a nice little B&B business for foreigners who want to sleep in a novelty setting. I'm not going to pretend I was expecting our troglodyte hosts to be running around in animal skins with bones through their noses but it did seem to be rather more commercialised and 'theme park' than I had expected. Our tour leader led us into the accommodation area. With a party of 18 we didn't have quite enough rooms to go round so the single ladies all shared a room together, and the single gents took another. We were led through the rock room 'complex' with our tour leader pointing out the doors, suggesting which rooms were best for the people sharing, and then showing us the communal areas. Everything was lighter than I expected and even though the rooms themselves were below ground level, there were large open spaces that let the light flood down.

My husband grabbed our bag and headed through the first door that he saw, accidentally and unknowingly grabbing what was probably the largest of the rooms. To be fair, space isn't a big benefit but I was glad we'd got one of the rooms with its own door since some of the rooms were paired up with only curtains separating their entrances. I was suffering from a very unpleasant cold and knew that I'd spend most of the night coughing my lungs up and if we'd been in one of those rooms I'd have kept everyone awake.

Inside our room the facilities were very basic. Two single beds had been cut from the rock, one on either side of the room with a small wall-mounted light between them. Each of the beds had a mattress, sheets, and a blanket but there was a thick rug folded at the foot of each which we could tell was going to be very much needed. The floor was decorated with a striped rag-rug and that was all there was in the room. Worryingly - especially in the middle of the night - there was a large step down from the sleeping area to the door so we both kept head torches to hand in case we needed to get up in the night.

The bathroom block had been built into the back of the owners' new house with one side for the men and the other for the women. The facilities were ok with two toilets, two showers and a large sink area. I didn't have a shower because I feared freezing on the way back to the room but there was plenty of hot water for washing.

There's not an awful lot to do at the lodge apart from sitting around and chatting. Our tour leader suggested to use some of the time before dinner by visiting a local 'museum' - a place he considered to be one of a kind and really very special. With nothing else available in terms of entertainment we all agreed to join him and headed off to walk the short distance towards a large house. The owner and two of his daughters were waiting for us. Our tour leader explained that this was a private museum and he knew only a couple of other such places in the whole of Libya. He felt it was important to support such an initiative by bringing us to see the place.

We all traipsed in and found a place that reminded me of my grandfather's garage; a couple of rooms filled with random objects that the owner had found or bought. When I was a child it was typical for children to decide to 'collect' things. Sometimes these were things of value - like stamps or coins - often they were things collected for the sake of having a collection, like the picture cards from cigarette packs of packs of tea. Others collected random objects and the owner of this 'museum' was probably the kind of kid who said to his friends "I'm going to collect key………….and locks………..and boxes………..and bags………….and animal skeletons…………..and rocks…………and every other daft thing that a sensible human being really wouldn’t bother with.

I struggled and I tried really hard to fake interest in this little museum. I went round two or three times to try to make it look like I was really interested in shoe lasts and woodworking tools and keys and old jerry cans and snake skins and half-broken old saddles and even random bits of rock but inside my quiet inner voice was screaming "You're having a laugh mate, this isn't a museum, it's your garage filled with old junk". I sought the glory in amongst the junk - "Look at these nice old pots" I said to my husband who snorted through his nose in surprise. There was nothing more for it, we had to get out and swallowing down our sniggers we burst out into the evening air.

We headed back to the lodge to wait for dinner which was - according to my diary - "a bit bleurgh". Slightly stale bread with very garlicky dip followed by vegetable soup and stuffed green peppers. The meat eaters tucked into a dish of rice with lamb whilst we non meat-eaters got rice with……almonds. There was nothing sweet to follow except for glasses of the worst tea I've ever tasted. We all dragged the meal out as long as we could but it was cold and there wasn't anything to do once the meal was over other than to go back, build up the layers of clothes, rugs and blankets on the bed and go to sleep. It was a cold night but we were surprisingly cosy in our little cave room though I coughed most of the night and slept very badly. Breakfast the next day was poor with just slightly old croissants served with honey or cheese spread.

If you are looking for a 'sleeping in a cave' experience, I don't think this will really satisfy most people. I'd definitely advise to book into one of Cappadocia's 'rock hotels' instead.
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Libyan Memories - Part Two: Tripoli and the Western Interior

National Museum

Gurgi Mosque

Abiya Seafood Restaurant

Qasr Al Haj Granary

Troglodyte Time

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