Still Touring Israel

My parents have been here for a week now. We have not only seen but driven through most of the country. On Saturday we visited the Northeastern corner of the country (the Golan Heights). We drove to Banyas Spring and then on to Nimrod's Fortress at the base of Mt. Hermon. It was quite interesting seeing the landscape change. The Golan is beautiful. We drove South down the Syrian border and then back home. On our way home we were stopped by a heard of sheep walking through the street. Interesting. It was a long day.

Sunday we decided to do something light and went to Caesarea. Due to the holidays there was much more activity here than in my past visits. Mom and Dad had a wonderful time talking to the lady in the dreydel shop about Israeli culture (I could hardly pull them away! The poor lady was not able to help her other paying customers.) She was very nice and had a lot of interesting things to share. We went out to see the "ruins" and noticed the Hippodrome was filled with people. They had some horses that were racing around the oval as they enacted Roman life years ago in this port city. After the races they had other horses that jumped over an obstacle course they set up. It was pretty entertaining. We moved from there to the amphitheater just in time to join another group there. They said someone was coming to speak to them so we stuck around. While they were waiting and passing the time someone suggested they sing a song...so I told them it was Mom's birthday (and it will be soon...). So the group of 100+ people had mom stand in the stadium and sang to her. She loved it :-) It was actually fun to be with the group. They had been touring for about a week and shared some of their experiences. I guess it was the conclusion of their tour before heading back to Europe and the person who came to talk to them was their tour guide (not about anything specific to the Caesarean Amphitheater... oh well). We really enjoyed joining the group for a short time. On our way out, we bought some fresh squeezed pomegranate juice. YUM! At $5 a cup we decided to share, but man oh man was it yummy!

Tonight we just returned to day from a 48 hour trip through the Dead Sea region, down to the southernmost tip of the country (Eilat), and diagonally Northward to the Gaza border and then home again. Lots of driving!!!!

Dead Sea Region: First stop was Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. My parents kept commenting on how hot it was...we were thinking how much it's cooled off since we were there in June! Second stop was Ein Gedi Nature Reserve for a hike to David's waterfall. Sara and I did this a month ago and it was her favorite spot so I wanted to make sure Mom and Dad got the chance to enjoy it also. The hike is really only 20 minutes up to the top, but there are a couple of small pools to stop along the way. MOM ACTUALLY GOT IN THE WATER!!!! She really doesn't like water, but it was once in a lifetime opportunity... plus we told her we would take a picture! She was brave enough to go right under the waterfall. We used her camera for the pictures so if I can grab it before they go I'll post it :-) We had a great time there. We left there around 2pm and headed to Masada. I had thought they were open until 5pm, but we found out that due to the holiday early closure, we could just barely make it by taking the last tram to the top. The returning final tram would be in 1 hour. It would have been nice to have at least another half hour up there, but we did get to see the majority of it. Our final stop in the Dead Sea Region was floating in the Dead Sea. I told Mom the water was really warm, even warmer than bath water. Well apparently at 5pm, things have cooled off a bit or maybe it was due to the weather change. She did get in the water though and totally enjoyed the experience. Dad's like a fish so he had no problems at all. He kept trying to push his legs down and thought it was weird that they kept floating towards the surface. It's really a crazy experience.

Eilat: Seemed like a perfect warm summer evening here. I called around looking for a hotel that morning and couldn't find anything available (I forgot about the holiday) so I resorted to the place Sara and I stayed a month ago. After getting situated in the "dorm room" at the Eilat Guest House we set out to find something to eat. There was an open market (which reminded me of a carnival atmosphere) where we found something suitable. Dad thought he ordered a chicken patty but ended up with some sort of cornmeal with chunks of corn in it. I was surprised when he said he liked it. Mom thought she ordered fish and got the chicken patty. I ordered chicken on a skewer and got what I expected. Ken had a burger, which was not as good as he had hoped. Nonetheless, we hadn't really eaten anything all day (other than the snacks we packed) so we were all happy to have something to eat. Afterwards we sat on the beach and enjoyed the moonlight over the Red Sea. This morning we woke up and went West a bit, almost to the Egyptian border and went snorkeling. We thought we could rent snorkel gear on the beach but couldn't find anything. I asked someone where they rented theirs and they said, why don't you borrow ours for a little bit. So we quickly went out and Dad got to snorkel for the first time ever. Sounds like he enjoyed it. I actually had Mom wade in and use the mask too. There weren't as many fish that close to shore, but I'm so proud of her for putting her face in the water! She saw a few fish and then we returned the mask. As I came out of the water someone was trying to take our beach chairs so I immediately said.... "lo, lo, lo, ani, ani, ani!" and they went away. See I've learned the important phrases. "No, no, no, mine, mine, mine!"

Driving Home: We drove through the Negev... basically straight across the country through the desolate desert. I'm glad we did it, but not sure I would choose to do it again. We kept wondering what would happen if the car broke down in the middle of nowhere... We finished our trek across the country and thought it might be interesting to see the Gaza border ("the wall"). So we drove South just a bit and sure enough there was a 20 foot wall with lots of security fences/wire all around. It seemed pretty quiet there maybe due to the holiday? We decided not to stay too long. Interesting to find out in the news tonight that Gaza sent a missile out today from the strip into Jerusalem. I’m glad I didn’t know that when we were there. We finished the day with our favorite Burger place on the way home. Now we need a day just to relax.