Now on bbc news the travel show. This week on the travel show, im in lebanon, finding out why beirut is hoping to regain its reputation as the entertainment capital of the middle east. We have amazing people who are doing work that is internationally recognised. Also coming up, ill be discovering how an ordinary man became the king of his own castle. Did he build it himself . Himself, stone by stone. It took him 73 years. Plus, lucy hits the british countryside to check out the latest hiking gadgets. Gopro, take a photo. With its mix of minarets and church spires, lebanons capital beirut is a clash of culture and religion between the mediterranean and the middle east. For four centuries, it was the ottomans who ruled here, right up until the end of world war i, when control was handed to the french. It wasnt until 1943 that the struggle for self rule finally paid off. Now this statue here in Martyrs Square was put here to commemorate all of those who died resisting ottoman rule in the name of lebanese independence. Today, the statue is pocked with bullet holes, scarred by the civil war that tore this city apart in the 1970s and 80s and made beirut a byword for sectarianism and conflict. A significant proportion of this citys Historic Buildings have been torn down. And on the ones that are still standing, the damage caused by the war is clearly visible. But it wasnt always this way. In the 1960s, beirut was the height of glamour, dubbed the paris of the middle east. And few spots epitomise this ideal better than one of the citys 5 star destinations. This commemorative book was produced a few years ago to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the hotel and when you look through it, it really gives you an idea of the calibre of celebrity that have stayed here. I mean, theyve got marlon brando, theres bridget bardot, even the great muhammed ali. I was coming to the phoenicia since the beginning. We used to do Fashion Shows here, and this is a very special hotel. Mona ross is an International Model who was based in beirut before the war. Wow mona ross take a seat now she is a permanent resident of the hotel. I mean, its part of my life. I consider im part of the columns of the phoenicia. Maybe i am you are part of the furniture, yeah . Part of the furniture yeah, youre part of the fabric of the whole hotel when the war came, the hotel became a battleground, a key Strategic Point because of its size and downtown location. I was passing by next to the phoenicia when it was destroyed and saw a little plant, hibiscus plant, with little red flowers on it and i was so touched by this and i couldnt believe my eyes why this plant is alive in front of this hotel who was dead . Today, a generation of young lebanese are determined to shake the dust and debris from the citys reputation. This is nice. Where have you brought me to, lisa . So, were in an area called mar mikhayel. When you come during the day, you can actually discover a lot of art galleries, concept stores. But then, at night time, it completely changes. So you can see there are a number of bars and restaurants, so it is quite buzzing. My sort of place i think a lot of people, when they think about lebanon or beirut, their perception is a country that is war torn and is full of violence. The war is part of lebanons history but it doesnt define the country. We have this amazing art scene, we have a lot of designers and artists and film producers, um, architects, amazing people who are doing work that is actually internationally recognised and i think that is the best way for people to really understand what this country is like. Lisa takes me to central station, which was recently named among the worlds 50 best bars, to try lebanons national drink, arak. Cheers, enjoy. Thank you. Oh, thats strong its got a real aniseed taste. You couldnt drink it too quickly. You have to take your time. So is this the drink that young lebanese people are drinking . Actually, this is a drink you normally enjoy with family over a long lunch. A lot of the bars, especially central station, they are creating these very innovative cocktails that celebrate the flavours of lebanon in a very interesting way. So here is modernes falafel. Ooh its a deconstructed falafel sandwich with vodka as the base, using the falafel spices. This is so nuts yeah. I mean, falafel cocktail . Yeah. Oh, that is good you know what . Thats like a drink that also feels like dinner. Yeah, i like this better than the arak. And its the night life thats really putting beirut back on the map. The music hall is one of the capitals most famous venues, hosting a cabaret packed with an eclectic mix of musicalforms. I said im going to get a place where you have extremes, there could be Classical Music and then something that is totally punk or very kitsch. I always like to mix things to be very eclectic. I tried to work on cultural entertainment usually those two words do not meet. Because entertainment is night life and alcohol, and culture is museums and theatres. With its bill celebrating both the citys pre war golden age and contemporary music trends, the music hall offers a vision of beirut comfortable with its past and living in the moment. And if you are thinking of heading to lebanon, here are the travel shows top tips for things to know before you go. Lebanon is an all year round destination with relatively mild winters and warm summers. But if you want to stay clear of the crowd, it is best to avoid august when things get busy. While most of the country is perfectly safe to explore, there are some areas that have travel advisories against them, like the border with syria, so it is always test to check with your own governments online advice first if you are planning a road trip. For some of the best views of the country, check out one of lebanons most popular attractions, the teleferique aerial cableway, just north of beirut. The gondolas will take you 650 metres up and you will get breathtaking views of the bay ofjounieh and the surrounding city, all topped off by the statue of our lady of lebanon and the stunning basilica. And if you are more into snow than sea and sun, then dont forget that lebanon is home to the middle easts biggest ski resort. You will find almost 50 miles of piste, up to around 8,000 feet, on the slopes of mount lebanon. The town of mzaar is the main resort, where youll also find a buzzing apres ski scene once youve hung up your skis for the day. Still to come on this weeks travel show. Say cheese lucy is testing out some of the latest gadgets on her hike around the english countryside. And i will be finding out about one mans mission to create his own fortress. So stick with us for that. Today i am in the beautiful north downs in surrey for the day to escape the hustle and bustle of london and test out a bunch of gadgets during my hike around the countryside. First up it is this the gotenna mesh device. It pairs to an app on your phone using bluetooth, then uses walkie talkie radio frequencies to send Text Communications when you are out of phone signal. I have one device for me, and one device for my colleague tom here, who is going to help me test them out. Were both on a mission to find a good spot. Mobile reception is pretty patchy but to make sure it definitely works, weve put our phones into aeroplane mode. Time to go. Let me know if you find a good spot for lunch in open areas, the devices can work up to four miles apart, and up to half a mile in denser locations. The battery life is about 2k hours. But its not cheap. A pair will cost £199. Tom has just sent me a message in the app, it looks like we have the perfect spot for lunch, which is perfect because i am pretty hungry. It is worth noting you cannot make phone calls with this device, but you can share and access gps location data alongside a map. So i know exactly where to go to meet tom. Now i know what i am going i have more time to test out my other gadgets, and ijust happen to have the latest gopro action cam. I am quite excited to try this out, mainly because its killer feature is image stabilisation which will give me super smooth video. Like with previous versions it also has voice control, but does it work . Gopro, take a photo it is counting me in. Im filming myjourney to tom sped up by x15. This gopro costs £379 or you can get one with slimmed down features for half the price. Gopro, stop recording. The gopro hero 7 black is expensive but this is more than just an incremental update. For your money you are getting 4k video, the ability to live stream to youtube or facebook, you can shoot super stabilised timelapse videos and chuck in the ability to automatically adjust the settings based on your surroundings, and you are looking at gopros best action cam yet. For something a little more retro, i have the latest snap to print cameras, the kodak minishot and polaroid onestep plus, which is what ill start with. Tom, i know you hate this, but you are the subject of my photo, so say cheese. This camera prices at £149. 99, it has standard lens and a portrait lens, plus there is a partner app available. Admittedly, photo quality was not as impressive as we were hoping, but after a few attempts we discovered you need to place the photos face down in order for them to develop, for around 5 10 minutes. But even after doing so, the photo quality still wasnt that good. For a polaroid, thats a bit disappointing. We did test the camera indoors and the photos came out much better. I also like how it captures moments in the iconic polaroid square frame. Now it is time to test out the kodak. Selfie . Lets do it. Despite what the name implies, is not that mini, but needs to accommodate the cartridges which contain the paper. From £69. 99 from kodak, it is one of the cheapest instant cameras on the market. It also has a 1. 7 inch viewfinder so you can check your picture before you print a credit card size photo. It is certainly not quiet, it is lightweight and a bit kiddy esque, but thats indicative of how easy it is to use. The screen is nice, i like that you can see what you are doing, it walks you through the printing process, and your photo is out in less than a minute. Certainly quicker than the polaroid. Photo quality. Not the greatest, but it definitely fares better with close ups. Overall both cameras are better with close ups, with the kodak much better for the outdoors. To close this week, i am at beiteddine palace, one of lebanons historic castles. Many of these fortresses are left over from the crusades. But beiteddine was built later, at the end of the 1700s, in tribute to the countrys ruler, emir bashirshihab ii. It is only an hour out of beirut, but nestled in the mountains it is a world away from the citys hustle and bustle. Legend has it that once this unique palace was completed, the emir ordered for the architect to have his hands chopped off to prevent him from building anything as beautiful ever again. The building was restored in the 1950s. Ziads father was part of the restoration team. Good to meet you. Welcome my father was here, he was 20 years old. So he worked here when he was very young . Very young. This is ziads father, moussa al maamari. When moussa was working on the palace, he discovered a plot of land just a few kilometres away, and had an idea. A few years later, in 1962, he laid the foundations of his very own landmark, Moussa Castle. This is incredible. How long did it take your father to build it . It took him 73 years of work to fulfil his dream. Imagine 73 yea rs . 73 years. And did he build it himself . Himself, stone by stone. As you can see every stone has a different design. Moussa drew the plans, laid the bricks and perfected the carvings of his very own 3500 square metre castle. He wrote here, i entered as still young, and get out as an old man. To tell us that he spent all his life in doing this. Inside, the surprises keep coming. Over 30 rooms, there are more than 150 life size stone and plaster figures, posed in dioramas depicting life in historic rural lebanon. Look at that, this is amazing. This is a village scene from moussas early life. And he made it all by his own hand. The statues, everything. Ziad takes me downstairs to see where it all began, moussas classroom. When he was a child he was caught sketching the plans for his dream castle. His teacher responded by beating him and tearing apart the drawing. My father stood up and collected the pieces of the drawing and he told them, you are going to see this real one day. Let me show you the drawing. Look at this the original tears. Thats right. It looks exactly like it. You see, its similar. Very similar. This is a work of art yeah. Your father sounds like the sort of person that i like, because when somebody tells him he cant do something, it makes him even more determined. Determined, yes, this is the story of my father. Moussa was set on avenging this childhood humiliation. He built a small door at the castles entrance so his teacher would have to bow to him when he finally visited. And if you need any more proof of moussas resolve, inside is a display of his own personal armoury. A massive collection of weapons. Something tells me that moussa was a man not to be messed with. Ive never seen so many guns in my life since it opened to the public in 1969, the castle has grown to become a big tourist attraction. In the summer, ziad estimates that they regularly welcome more than 1000 visitors a day. This afternoon, moussas wife is among them. Sadly, moussa died earlier in the year, injanuary. But his family are determined to keep his legacy alive. Beiteddine palace, which yourfather helped to restore, is more than 200 years old. Do you think in 200 years time, people will still be coming to visit Moussa Castle . Ah, yes. For sure. This place has been absolutely out of this world. It is hard to believe that one man built all of this by himself. But i am afraid to say that is your lot from us this week on the travel show. Catch us next week when. This is japans most northerly main island of hokkaido. For decades travellers have been brought here by its stark contrast to the rest of the country. The distinctive communities. I have come to meet them and find out more about the countrys northern frontier. So make sure you join us for that if you can, and dont forget you can keep up with us in real time by following us on social media. But for now from me, ade adepitan and all the travel show team here in beautiful lebanon, bye hello. Well, our cool weather with showers is here to stay through the week. If anything, its going to turn even more unsettled as we head into friday and the weekend. But thats still a long way off. In the short term, actually, there is a lot of dry weather out there, a lot of clear weather across the uk. This is what it looks like through the early hours. So yes, we have some showers across the south, some across the lake district, lancashire, maybe western scotland, and our temperatures nine degrees first thing in the morning in edinburgh, 12 degrees there in devon and cornwall. This is what it looks like first thing on tuesday, then. So we wake up to a lot of sunshine, a scattering of showers in the west of scotland, some across northern england, one or two affecting the south west of england as well. Now, the daytime will bring sunny spells and temperatures of around 21 degrees for london, 17 expected in belfast and in newcastle. Now, notice theres a bit of cloud and rain there in the south west, and that should reach cornwall and devon a little bit later on in the day. But, for most of us, the end of the day on tuesday is looking absolutely fine, lovely at sunset out there. Heres mid week, and low pressure dominating the weather across the atlantic. A succession of weather fronts and low pressures heading our way, one just to the south of greenland there. Theyre all heading our way. This is what it looks like on wednesday, so one weather front brings rain to wales and many parts of england, another one to Northern Ireland and western scotland, as well. That bit in between there, perhaps the north east of england and the borders, getting away with it, but probably later in the day that rain will arrive. Suffice to say most of us will catch at least a bit of rain on wednesday. Now, thursday, the weather does improve a little bit. Youll notice that our weather icons are showing dry here, partly cloudy skies. And then on friday, the weather goes downhill again. Another low pressure comes off the atlantic, and this one is a big area of low pressure. That will be barrelling through, notjust during the course of friday, but the weekend as well. So for many of us, an increasing wind, outbreaks of rain, particularly across Western Areas on friday, temperatures still around about 18 20 degrees. This is relatively humid air coming in out of the south. And then that low pressure is still with us through the weekend. You can see how big it is, stretching from the central north atlantic, in fact, all the way to scandinavia, and further weather fronts will swing around it and bring us some wet weather. Bye bye. This is bbc news. Welcome if youre watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. Im duncan golestani. Our top stories hong kongs chief executive warns that violence is pushing the region down a path of no return. The chief executives responsibilities ensure that hong kong remains a day and orderly and law abiding city. A safe. The Trump Administration continues to clamp down on immigration, this time targetting people who need government aid. A norwegian man appears in court in oslo accused of terrorism in connection with a gun attack on a mosque. And 50 years on, well hear from the couple who came