9:00 AM — Departure from Beirut Your knowledgeable English-speaking driver collects you from your Beirut hotel and heads southeast into the Chouf Mountains — pine-forested ridges climbing above the coastal plain as you wind upward toward Beiteddine.

Arrive at one of the most magnificent palaces in the Arab world — built between 1788 and 1840 by Emir Bashir II, the powerful ruler who unified Lebanon's mountain communities under a single authority for the first time in centuries. Three grand interconnected courtyards decorated with hand-cut geometric tilework, carved cedar-wood ceilings, and elaborately painted reception halls reveal the extraordinary ambition and craftsmanship of this Chouf mountain retreat. Beneath the palace, an underground museum preserves Lebanon's finest collection of Byzantine mosaics — floor panels of extraordinary colour and detail recovered from archaeological sites across the country. Today the palace serves as the official summer residence of the Lebanese President. Your driver shares the full story of Emir Bashir and the palace he built to endure.

Drive to the Barouk Cedar Forest — one of the most accessible and most rewarding sections of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, Lebanon's largest nature reserve and a UNESCO-recognised landscape of exceptional ecological significance. The Barouk grove sits at high altitude within the reserve and protects ancient cedar trees descended from the vast forests that once covered these mountains — the same trees whose timber built Phoenician ships, Solomon's Temple, and the palaces of Egypt. An hour among these ancient trunks — walking the marked paths through the grove at your own pace, the mountain air cool and clear, the silence of a protected forest around you — is one of the most quietly restorative experiences in the entire Chouf. Your driver shares the story of the reserve and the conservation efforts that saved these trees as you explore.

Drive to Deir el Qamar — meaning "Monastery of the Moon" — one of the most enchanting and best-preserved villages in Lebanon and the country's first capital under the Ma'an dynasty. The central square is framed by honey-stone mansions dating to the 17th and 18th centuries, a Druze palace, and public buildings that speak to the village's former political importance. After the imperial grandeur of Beiteddine and the natural solitude of the cedar forest, Deir el Qamar offers something quieter and equally moving — a village that has simply endured, its mosque and church standing together in the same square for centuries.

Fakhreddine Mosque & Saydet el Tallé Church Visit the 17th-century mosque built by Fakhreddine II — the visionary Druze emir considered one of the founding fathers of modern Lebanon — before climbing to the hilltop Maronite church with sweeping views over the Chouf valleys below. Two places of worship, metres apart, sharing the same hillside for centuries — a moment that captures the essential spirit of Deir el Qamar and of Lebanon itself.

Lunch in Deir el Qamar — optional Settle into one of Deir el Qamar's traditional mountain restaurants for a Lebanese lunch — stone-vaulted dining rooms and shaded terraces serving generous mezze spreads, grilled meats, and fresh mountain bread with Chouf valley views. After a morning in a presidential palace and an afternoon in an ancient cedar forest, lunch here feels like exactly the right conclusion to a day in the Chouf Mountains.

Return to Beirut — approx. 5:30–6:00 PM Mountain drive back to Beirut with drop-off at your hotel — completing a full day in the Chouf that moved from a presidential palace to an ancient cedar forest to Lebanon's first capital, entirely at your own pace.