Driving is more of an adventure in Beirut than in Dubai. Remember all the craters and cars packed in ways that cars should not be packed in a road?

Both are great places to visit ... and quite different from one another.

There was a time when everyone with money in the vicinity of the Arabian peninsula (and immediately neighboring countries) would try to get over to Beirut (or elsewhere in Lebanon) for some part of the year or another (the R. Karami years come to mind). Now, that same traffic is generally more toward Dubai than toward Beirut -- with the exception of people of Syrian-Lebanese origin.