how i spent my winter vacation (leg three)
So, yes, this post should have debuted in January. And we're now nearing the end of April. I'm a little behind. But better late than never, right? YES. On to leg three (as you can see, this trip is not bipedal)...
The final stop on our Tour de Middle East was the Promised Land - Israel. Our plan was to take an overnight bus from Cairo to Taba, where we would walk across the country border to Eilat, Israel, and finally, catch a bus from Eilat to Jerusalem. And, for the most part, that’s what happened. After booking it to the bus station in Eilat, however, we found that the Jerusalem bus we had planned to take was full and had to wait for another couple of hours for the next one. Fortunately, the weather was lovely, so we spent the extra time trying Israel bourekas (pastries, which until I looked it up on the internet just now, I thought were pronounced “boikuses”), ogling at the number of young people walking around with huge guns,....
.... and taking in some (much missed) rays.
And then, before we knew it, we were off to Jerusalem.
On the bus, I ended up sitting next to a “talker” from New York, who was also visiting Israel for the first time. What I had expected to be a couple of hours of quality time with my iPod turned into a fairly deep conversation about travel and experiencing the world while you’re young. He had apparently taught English in Brazil after college and was pretty nostalgic about his own nomadic days exploring South America. He said he had made a plan to spend his twenties seeing and experiencing as many things as possible, while his thirties would be his time for getting a permanent job, settling down, etc. Interestingly, we learned that Israeli students also start preparing for careers at a later age than we do in the states. Most serve in the military after regular schooling and then take a year or so to travel after its completion, so they usually don’t begin university studies until their early twenties. I was intrigued by the idea of getting practical life experience before going to university as in America we are so used to the typical school-college-job pathway.
In Israel, I couch surfed for the first time ever and had an extremely positive experience. In Jerusalem, we stayed with some university students who offered us tea made with fresh herbs, gave us helpful suggestions about where we could get the best views of the city (like from the Mount of Olives, pictured below),...
.... and showed us their very own stop-motion films (one was studying animation). Best of all, they made me an eye patch (out of the same material they had used to make a toilet seat cover) to wear when I lost a contact lens and was temporarily blind in one eye.
They even gave me a sword to match.
We spent our first day in Jerusalem in the Old City, where we wound up getting a “free” tour around all the major religious sights from a guy that worked in one of the souvenir shops.
Prayers tucked into the Wailing Wall.
Light-up decorations at the Stations of the Cross - this just felt wrong to me somehow...
Even though the guide was pretty sketchy, grabbing us complimentary magnets or chocolate bars from random kiosks (“It’s okay – everyone knows me here!”), we didn’t end up having to pay him anything.
Got this little guy fo' free!
So I guess the only cost were our feelings of security that we weren’t being scammed throughout the day. We eventually escaped by promising to come back and visit him the next day. Needless to say, we avoided Old City for the rest of our time in Jerusalem.
From Jerusalem, we rented a car to drive to Tel Aviv, so that we could stop at the Masada fortress and the Dead Sea along the way. After riding mostly in buses, trains, or planes to get from place to place, it was liberating to be back in a car again (though I refused to drive – driving in an unfamiliar country terrifies me).
Masada, while having an incredible view and fascinating history, was kind of ruined (no pun intended) for me by my poor decision to wear just my one contact lens instead of my glasses.
Since my vision is pretty terrible (for my eyes on their own, the world’s just a bunch of fuzzy shapes and colors), I started getting nauseous, exhausted, and had to spend all my concentration on not falling down the uneven stairs, having basically zero depth perception.
Guess I should have worn the eye patch.
Kristen and James had a good time climbing around, at least.
After Masada, we pulled off on the side of the road and stripped down into our bathing suits to have a dip in the Dead Sea. Getting down to the water felt kind of like walking on Mars until we got to the shore, which to my feet’s great surprise was incredibly sharp due the salt.
But it was all worth it once we got into the water. The Dead Sea is so salty that it’s practically impossible not to float (don’t ask me to explain the physics behind it, it just is). It’s even kind of difficult to swim because your whole body just keeps bobbing up to the top the whole time.
I didn't bring my camera for fear of dropping it in the sea, so I stole these pics from James via Kristen's blog, which you can (and should) read here.
Not that you’d really want to go underneath – I just barely got some of the salt water splashed up my nose and it stung like crazy. The scenery was fantastic though and definitely one of those moments that you never forget.
Our last stop on our way to Tel Aviv was in Bethlehem, where we stuffed ourselves with freshly made baklava and some kind of sweet cheese pastries (they were crazy popular with the locals) as well as probably the most delicious shawarma (a type of wrap with specially grilled meat) we’d ever tasted.
On our way out, we scoped out all the protest graffiti on the West Bank barrier wall.
And, at last, we made it to our final destination, the beautiful and sunny city of Tel Aviv. Once again we were fortunate to stay with fabulous Couchsurfers, who not only allowed us to take over their living room, but also took the time to take us around town to the beach,...
Like Jaffa, an ancient port city.
Or an outdoor gym (all the machines can be used just with the user's body weight)
.... feed us local food,....
Jachnun, Yemeni rolls of dough with spicy tomato sauce
Sabich, pita with fried eggplant and hardboiled eggs
Halva ice cream cone (okay, so the halva scoop is actually hidden under the chocolate one)
... and cooked Shashlikh with us at their apartment among many other things.
In general, Tel Aviv gave me an Orbit gum good, clean feeling - there were public recycling bins all around (there are only two that I know of in Tula), dog walkers everywhere, trees and parks along the streets, and an extremely convenient bike rental system (like Zipcars with bicycles – I’ve heard they have them in some cities in the US now..).
And I don't know, maybe it was just the sun, but, in general, people just seemed happy there! The only downside that I repeatedly heard from those we spoke with was that prices there are pretty high. There was even a huge demonstration that started last year because of a price rise in cottage cheese! Noam, one of the Couchsurfers that we stayed with, told me the story one night while we were walking around the city and we stopped in a grocery store to pay a visit to the “white cheese that started it all.”
And soon before we knew it, it was time to bundle ourselves back into our jackets and scarves and head back to Russia. That was in January, but I still think about those two weeks all the time. As I travel, I tend to remember cities in the same way that I remember people, each with their own personality traits and peculiarities. While each of these four cities were vastly different from one another, I fell in love with each of them for different reasons – Istanbul for its colorful streets and personalities, Cairo for its constant vitality and unpredictability, Jerusalem for its intriguing mixture of the old and new, and Tel Aviv for its energetic and youthful spirit. In my experience, you can only understand so much about a place by reading about it or hearing about it on the news. While I only got to spend a short time with each of these cities, the personal connections that I now have with them has drastically remolded my everyday perceptions of them. Somehow each city isn’t just a mark on a map anymore, but rather becomes something much more, well, human.
And THAT is why I love travel.
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
kaledo-art
areudirty
2087
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline