Why Hasn't This Been Updated?

So it's been about a year since i wrote anything on any trip. very sad. Suffice it to say that israel is a blessed place that I would visit again and again.

To sum up our trip:
We continued from the Kibbutz south toward Bet Shean, an ancient Roman town that was destroyed by an earthquake, among other things. (About 2 months ago I discovered that the ampitheatre there was used in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar for the big finale of the title song... If I had only know sooner!)
We climbed around the ruins and then, on the advice of about 10 or 15 peole, we headed to the Dead Sea via the West Bank road that skirts the border between Jordan.
We drove to the little collection of hotels and touristy spots and had a late lunch of pizza and the most delicious lemonade ever. It has to be pretty good to remember it over a year later.

From there we kept driving and driving until we reached Eliat, the vacation spot on the Red Sea. Next time we probably won't make such a long trip since it was a long trip and reminded me of Florida. Except of course there was Egypt on one side and Jordan on the other!
We experienced another delightful breakfast of cheeses and too many choices of olives. We went to the Aquarium in Eliat and walked along the boardwalk before driving on to the Dead Sea to spend the next night.
We were delighted to find out that because it was Shabbat the next day we didn't have to check out until we wanted to. So we spent Shabbat climbing Masada via the Snake Path. It was hot and well worth it.
We then spent the afternoon floating the Dead Sea and feeling all smooth afterwards. It was amazing that after walking into the water only a few feet that you feel your feet start to float up!

As the evening arrived we started our drive to Jerusalem and to stay at the Mount Zion Hotel. It's an old eye hospital and as much confusion as there is in Jerusalem for finding your way around, we drove right to the hotel by sheer luck. Then, they didn't have our reservation! Luckily we had a confirmation number and we given a nice room that was bigger than most.
We walked through the Old City, which was a little overwhelming, but very much like I expected it to be. We found the Western Wall, but did not approach it that evening.

The next day we opted to take a tour of the city. It took forever to get started b/c there was a couple that had taken a taxi from Tel Aviv and were late arriving. We drove around to overlook the Old City and then to a lot of Christian sights (we were the only jewson the trip). We saw the Garden of Gethsemane and the supposed Last Supper location and the burial site of David. Then we walked through the Old City to the Church of th Holy eplucre, but not before stopping for what seemed like an eternity at a gift shop full of nativity scenes and crucifixes. (We knew the tour guide had made some sort of deal with them). After almost an hour there, we moved on to the church and after over an hour wandering around there, we decided to leave the tour and get some lunch.

Full Day at the Kibbuttz

After our first night at the kibbutz we drove up the Szfat or Safed or however it's spelled. We were greeted with cold, miserable, and rare rain! We sat in the car debating on what we should do and then decided to save the hillside town for another trip and drove out of the rain and off the mountain to the nearest McDonalds where I ate McShwarma. From there we visited the Hula Valley Nature Preserve and tried to spot Water Buffalo. We continued driving into the Golan Heights again and felt like we were the only people around for miles. We drove to the top of Mt Bental, where I believe it was about 25 degrees. A nice man took our picture.
After that, we drove past the huge windmills on the edge of the Syrian border. From this vantage we could see a town the Syrians chose to leave empty after it was given back to them by the Israelis. We also saw a bombed out mosque that had Hebrew graffiti all over it.
That evening we were invited to the Holocaust Remembrance Day Memorial at the kibbutz by Rivkah, the nice woman who worked in the office at the lodgings. It was all in Hebrew, with poems, a few songs, a special presentation that involved their only Holocaust survivor that was still alive and living on the kibbutz. It was all very moving despite the language barrier. The service ended with a goosebump singing of Hatikvah and then we went off to the room to watch a few Holocaust documentaries, including the one about the Shanghai Ghetto.


Hula Valley
Mount Bental
McShuarma

Driving to the Sea of Galilee

The next morning we left Tel Aviv for the Sea of Galilee to stay at a kibbutz for two nights. Gaby packed us a wonderful lunch including pita and hummus and we set off past the security fence and down a toll road. We arrived at Tiberias via probably the most winding and picturesque road we had been on so far. We drove below the sea level marker and descended toward the Sea, which looks kind of like a pretty blue lake. Since Tiberias is full of religious history there were yeshiva students everywhere and we had lunch on rocks at the Sea's edge surrounded by men in kippah. The kibbutz was just to the south of the Sea on the east bank of the Jordan river, something rare in Israel. We had views of Jordan just a few hundred yards away! The entire area around the Sea, or the Kinneret as it is called in Israel is almost entirely agricultural with banana plants growing in thick groves along the shores.
Our lodging at the kibbutz was my fave of the trip and very quaint. It had a tiny little kitchen and was decorated to reflect one of the activites of the kibbutz, the barn.
After settling in, we walked around a little and then decided to head to the Kinneret to drive around and see things. As we approached the Golan Heights, the ring road around the Sea was blocked by some sort of fire, so we decided to take the high road and then weave our way back down around the fire. Our first taste of the Golan was kind of chilly but with breathtaking views of the Sea below.
We eventually continued around the Sea, past several historical places that are mentioned in the Bible. (No seriously?) We decided to have dinner in Tiberias. We walked around, enjoying watching the yeshiva students and the soldiers in civilian dress carrying huge guns on their shoulders. We decided to eat at a place that also seemed to cater to cats as well since they were everywhere! I got adventurous and tried chicken hearts on a stick and they were some of the best things I've ever eaten.
After dinner we wandered into an internet cafe and then stopped for ice cream on our way back to the kibbutz.


Kibbutz

Tel Aviv Day!

We were lucky to get a native tour of Tel Aviv on our second Day in Israel. Dovi and Gaby took us to the Shuk, or market, in Tel Aviv in the morning and we walked past dozens of fresh fruit and veggie stands and cheese and olives in abundance! Martin bought a baseball cap to keep his head from turning red and we walked along the streets past colorful cafes to one that Gaby enjoys. I think they had the absolute best apple pie.cake I've ever tasted. The day was perfectly clear and the spring trees were all blooming. It was lovely.
We went into several shops, including Michal Negrin's shop. This is the same woman whose jewelry I wore at our wedding. She does wonderful kind of romantic pieces but very hip. If you went to my wedding you might remember. Anyway... for lunch Dovi took us to possibly the yummiest falafel stand ever. It was all you could eat and they had all sorts of yummies like fried potato slices, pickled eggplant, olives and sauces. It was yummy. We also wandered around Dizengoff Street and Dizengoff Center and had a yummy frozen lemonade with mint leaves.
After walkeing around most of the day, Dovi took us through the rest of Tel Aviv by car and around the beaches to see some interesting sights. Tel Aviv is very modern and very spread out, with some huge skyscapers to boot! We pulled over at the beach to watch kayakers and the clubs getting ready for the evening. One place had tons of white block furniture on the beach with colorful throw pillows everywhere. I couldn't imagine a place like that in Pensacola or even Daytona Beach.
That evening we met almost all of Martin's other cousins for coffee at a place called Cup O' Joe in Bat Yam. Liat was there and so were Gabys and Dovi's sons Guy and Emit and their wives. Emit is very religious and doesn't look at women, which was kind of weird, but whatever. Guy works for El Al like his father and so they could talk to Martin about airline stuff. It was very nice to meet everyone even if there was a slight langage barrier.

Day Three- Israel At Last!

We arrived at about 345AM in Tel Aviv. The airport has recently been redone and it was gorgeous. I had nothing to compare it to, but it was very spacious and light. We rented a car from Eldan rental care, basically a Mazda 323 called a Lantis. We got maps and headed to Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, where Martin's cousins live. (Bat Yam means daughter of the sea, I love that). We found the place to meet Martin's cousin after only one wrong turn and we sat in the car, very jet lagged from no sleep on the plane, and waited for about an hour while the sun came up before we called Martin's cousin Dovi. He drove to meet us and we met his wife Gaby and sat talking for a about hour before we decided that we should get some rest. We took a nap until noon and then woke up to eat a marvelous lunch of burekas, pitas and hummus and everything yummy and Israeli. The good thing to remember is that we got to end Passover a day early since we were in Israel.
After we showered and ate, we took a ride about 5 minutes up the road to Old Jaffa, a wonderful town between Bat Yam and Tel Aviv that is a historically important town and has wonderful architecture and winding, steep streets full of artisan shops and restaurants. We wandered around and took pictures up the coast of the gorgeous coastline.
After wandering around Jaffa, we took a wild ride back to Bat Yam and went to the local mall for coffee and to look at the shops. It was a three story mall with lots of great shops and food places. I bought a few things and then we went to meet Martin's other cousins, Moshe, Ahuva and Liat, for dinner at their apartment.
They fed us very well and were very happy to see us! The food was again, very yummy and we talked about their travels and we told them about ours. We looked through photo albums and looked at momentos of their trips to the US. It is interesting that in Israel, instead of a Senior portrait for high school, everyone gets a picture in the army with a big uzi.

Day Three Spring 2005

Our next morning started with a little breakfast and fine Swedish television programming where they were apparently talking about animal teats, kid you not. We then started preparing to get to the airport and Mandie and I decided that we should pack our lunch and eat on the way if we wanted to make the ferry. We arrived at the airport to discover, through rifling through our bags, that our tickets had been somehow left in Frankfurt the day before. Thankfully, Lufthansa was sympathetic and they had arranged for us to pick them up at the airport. We said our goodbyes to the Odbloms and headed to Frankfurt to spend the afternoon. But not before buying a strange looking viking in the airport shop.
We stowed our luggage at FRA and took a train into Frankfurt's main shopping district. It was pretty busy being a Saturday and we mostly just wandered around and then had some fine German cuisine before wandering back through a park and then heading back to the airport.
Our flight to Tel Aviv wasn't supposed to leave until after midnight but we managed to get business class seats on the earlier flight, which would put us into TLV at about 345 in the morning. We went through security, twice and then waited in a large waiting area before getting on the plane. Since it was still technically passover we thought it was interesting that the flight offered bread. No one, except one lady, took any.

Day Two Spring 2005

Well, we didn't get to sing the song to Mandie when she picked us up, we were way too tired. We were hingry and needed something Passover-friendly in Sweden. With an understanding that strict adherence is impossible we decided that a beef hot dog would work and on Mandie's suggestion, we drove to a Shell station that had a nice selection of dogs, served with two HUGE scoops of mashed potatoes. It probably ranks as one of the top 5 hot dogs I've ever had. From there we drove through Gothenburg to take the ferry to Mandie and Anders' house, where we were greeted by Holly, who was very surprised to find other people walking into the house than her mother. She quickly warmed up to us and we sat down for dinner and chatting a little later. We went to bed relatively late in anticipation of overcoming jet lag. As always, they were wonderful hosts and we vowed to return for a longer visit this summer.