8:30 AM — Hotel pickup Your guide meets the group at your Beirut hotel and heads east on the Damascus highway — over the Lebanese mountains and down into the Bekaa Valley. Anjar is about an hour away.

Anjar — the Umayyad city nobody puts on their list Built in the early 8th century by Caliph Walid I — the ruler who also commissioned the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus — and abandoned just decades later, never reoccupied. Colonnaded streets, a palace with over 40 towers, a mosque, bathhouses — all still standing. The only surviving example of a complete Umayyad palatial city in the entire Levant, and one of the most underrated archaeological sites in the Middle East. Most tour groups skip it. Your guide makes sure you understand exactly why they are wrong to.

Stone of the Pregnant Woman — scale check before the temples A single limestone block, 21 metres long, weighing 1,000 tonnes, cut 2,000 years ago and never moved. Still in the quarry where it was abandoned. Your guide explains why it is here — and why standing next to it recalibrates your sense of what is waiting at the temple complex five minutes ahead.

Baalbek Temple Complex — the guide earns their fee here The Temple of Jupiter on Trilithon stones each weighing over 800 tonnes — the largest dressed stones in human history. The Temple of Bacchus, larger than the Parthenon, almost entirely intact, the best-preserved Roman temple on earth. The Temple of Venus completing a complex that took three centuries. Without a guide, Baalbek is overwhelming. With the right one, it becomes the most memorable site you visit in Lebanon. Your guide covers the architectural, religious, and historical layers of Baalbek in a way that makes every column and every courtyard make sense.

Lunch in Zahle or Baalbek — included Lebanese mezze and grilled meats — either in Baalbek or at the riverside restaurant terraces of Zahle, Lebanon's most celebrated food destination, depending on timing and group preference. Fully included.

Chateau Ksara — the Roman caves beneath Lebanon's oldest winery Founded by Jesuit monks in 1857 above 2 kilometres of Roman cave cellars — the same Roman civilisation you spent the morning exploring at Baalbek, now underground and ageing wine. The cave tour comes first — ancient tunnels at a naturally constant temperature year-round — then a tasting of Ksara's Cabernet-Syrah blends, Blanc de Blancs, and Sunset Rosé. Your guide connects the dots between Baalbek and Ksara in a way that makes the afternoon feel like a continuation rather than a different stop entirely.

Return to Beirut — approx. 6:00–7:00 PM Drop-off at your Beirut hotel. A ghost city, the world's greatest Roman temples, and ancient wine caves — the Bekaa done properly.