The two parking lots next to the office where I work in Achrafieh get filled up pretty quickly; if you get there at 8:45 instead of 8:30, there’s a good chance that you will not find a spot.
The next best option in this case is parking in the designated areas along on the street. It costs 250 LL for 15 minutes, and you can pay only a maximum of 2,000 LL at a time. You can pay by either putting coins in one of the machines on the sidewalk or buying a prepaid card from the some the guys on scooters that ride along the streets all day long.
So once in a while, I have to park in one of these spots and go back every 2 hours to put more coins in the machine. And of course, whenever you need to buy a card from one of those guys on scooters, you can never find one!
I don’t usually carry change, so I start going into shops and asking random people to exchange bills into coins. 2 weeks ago, I couldn’t get enough coins to pay for the park meter, so I ended up getting a 10,000 LL ticket.
You can pay your ticket by either one of 3 ways:
– Buy a card from a guy who works for that company
– Pay in any Libanpost branch
– Pay in coins
By the time I’m done with work, Libanpost is already closed and good luck finding a guy on a scooter.
So my only option is to pay in coins…
And in addition to that ticket, I got another one last night next to Capitole in Downtown…
So I stood next to the machine this morning and fed it 20,000 LL in coins to pay off my 2 tickets…
Oh, and if you don’t pay within the specified period, the ticket goes up to 40,000LL! Good luck finding 40,000LL in coins!