Day 3- Monday

We packed our bags for the next 4 days and drove to Jerusalem. Our first stop in the old city was the Western Wall. Apparently it was a BarMitzpha day so there was a lot of activity. There were probably twenty-five 13 year old boys and their families celebrating this special event. Women are not allowed in the men’s area, so there are groups of men set up next to the divider wall. The women pull chairs up to the divider and stand on them so they can see and participate in the ceremony. The boys tie a box with scriptures on it to their foreheads and put a leather strap around their arms. Then they read from the Torah and the women clap and throw candy at them. (This is obviously my observations only as I haven’t researched or asked much about what actually happens at a BarMitzpha). It was fascinating to watch.

After visiting the wall we ventured further into the old city and walked past a million street vendors with all sorts of things to buy. Sara tried her hand at bartering - she needed some coaching :-) It can be overwhelming with all the commotion and things to look at. Once you stop and look if you don’t buy you must be prepared to hear them call you names. One vendor was muttering stupid ugly faces as we were leaving. It was almost funny. That seems like something you might hear from a 5 year old, not a grown man. Anyway, we tried to not stop and look unless we were seriously considering a purchase. After picking up a few things, we found the Via Dolorosa. We stopped at each of the 14 stations that mark the path Jesus took with the cross all the way to the crucifixion and burial. It was a hard path to follow with so many street vendors and tourists along the way. The final stations 10-14 were all in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

After touring much of the Old City we made our way through the Muslim quarter and out the Damascus Gate towards the Garden Tomb. This is by far my favorite spot in Jerusalem. It’s so peaceful here. We stayed for almost and hour and then decided we should probably figure out where we were staying tonight. We noticed there were a few hotels not to far away so we went in and asked if they had any rooms and what the price was. At the second hotel we said we were looking for something a little cheaper and he directed us to the St. George’s Cathedral Guest House. He called them and they had availability so we walked another block and reserved a room. Now to get back to the car which was parked at the mall outside of the Old City. We stopped at the outdoor mall and split a pasta dish for dinner. Sara ordered coffee. The lady looked at her funny and said “hot?” I was surprised too. How can anyone drink coffee when it’s 90 degrees outside? I guess if I drank coffee maybe I would understand.

After dinner I thought I would show her the Mt. of Olives. Ken and I walked up it last time, but there were cars there and I thought I would be able to find the road easily. Hmmmm. We drove all over, down a few one way streets and had a few near misses. One pedestrian seemed pretty angry with my maneuvering and Sara thought he might try and break through the passenger window. She said, “it’s clear, it’s clear, drive, drive!” We did also come face to face with a tour bus on a one way street. I was thankful for a parking spot on the left to jump into while the bus drove by. In the end we finally made it to the street I thought would take us to the top of the Mt. We drove and drove and pretty soon I thought there is only room for one car here, how are we going to get down the mountain? Is this a one way? How does this happen!?! In my defense there are hardly any street signs in Israel. The road turned to gravel and the next thing I know there are a bunch of teen age boys on the side of the road just hanging out. They thought it would be fun to bang on the windows of the car. Yikes! Up a head I saw a girl with a couple of guys and thought maybe we could ask her how to get down off the mountain. Miraculously her brother was just about to drive into Jerusalem and he was willing to show us the way. We went barreling down the same road we just came up. I guess the street is used both ways and they just honk when they get to a blind corner. With all that adventure, Sara felt like she had seen enough of the Mt. of Olives and didn’t need to come back in the morning. We arrived at the hostel and fell asleep…or tried to.

Day 2- Sunday

Another busy day planned ahead of us. We left for the Sea of Galilee around 10:30am. I guess the Israelis refer to it as Lake Kinneret. Ken’s co-worker always looks at me funny when I refer to it as the Sea of Galilee. Anyway, our first stop was the Jordan River and then on to the historic city of Capernaum where Jesus did most of his miracles and sermons. This site was considered a holy site so we had to put our extra clothes on that covered our shoulders and knees. The city had a temple and the remains of many houses- one of which belonged to Peter Jesus’ disciple. Down the road we tried to get into the Mt of Beatitudes but found it closed on Sunday. This was disappointing but we did get into the church of St Peter which commemorates the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 and the restoration of Peter after his denial of Jesus. We finished the day with a walk on the beach in Haifa. That evening we finalized our plans for visiting Eilat and Petra later in the week by booking a tour and place to stay.

Day 1- Saturday

I allowed Sara to sleep in a little bit before packing up and heading to Megiddo. There was only one other tourist there while we were there so we were able to enjoy the excavation site and ruins pretty much by ourselves. It was a great temperature outside with a nice breeze (better than when we were here last time). Sara found a lizard peacefully laying on a rock nearby and thought it would be fun to chase it my direction. Yikes! They scurry so fast! This was the biggest lizard I have seen yet… maybe 12 inches head to tail. We walked through the whole site and down the water cistern through the tunnel that led outside the city wall. After a short hike back to the car we decided to head to Nazareth for the rest of our afternoon.

Finding the old city was rather difficult since most of the signs were in Arabic, but we eventually found it. We visited the Basilica of the Annunciation which holds the ruins of an ancient house proposed to be Mary’s home where the angel announced to her that she would give birth to a son and will name him Jesus. When we got there, a service was currently being held so we tried not to be a distraction. Both Sara and I had tank tops and shorts on which is not considered appropriate attire so we had to borrow 2 pieces of cloth- one to wrap around our shoulders and the other around our waists. This was a good reminder for us to bring an extra set of clothes for the “sacred” sites that require you to follow a dress code. We walked through the market and on to “Mary’s Well” which supposedly used to have healing water in it (all gone now). On the ay back to the car we stopped by a bakery and tried a tasty treat. Not sure what was in the pastry… it was very sugary. We came home around 5pm and joined our neighbors (Bears) for dinner down at the beachfront. We had a really nice time and we were both ready for bed after a full day.

Busy week

My good friend Sara is coming to visit today!!!! I can't wait. Ken is leaving for his meetings in the US tonight so I will be dropping him off and bringing Sara back for the week. I think it will be a busy week with lots of sightseeing trips. I will have limited access to the computer so I'll probably blog about it next weekend.
Stay tuned...

Just my luck...

I'll start with Thursday. Ken woke up not feeling well so he called in sick. Actually he still worked most of the day, but it was from home. Around 4pm we were feeling hungry so we drove down the hill and decided to try a famous falfel stand. Parking is kind of a bear down there so we thought we would just jump out, order and get back to the car. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. Once we were down there we must have forgotten about our get-in-get-out plan and were down there for a bit longer than planned. When we came back to the car we had a friendly note on our windshield kindly requesting 100 shekels for a parking violation. Uggh. We must have had our sadness written all over our faces because someone actually stopped to see if we needed help (doesn't happen often here). The man said if you buy a slip from the meter within 10 minutes of getting the ticket you can send it in with a letter and they will dismiss the ticket. Seems like a good idea to us, so we went up to the machine and purchased a slip. I stopped by the neighbors (Bears) that night and asked if they could explain the process better to me and they helped me type up a letter in Hebrew to send in with the ticket. Have I told you how wonderful and helpful our neighbors are? On Friday I took the letter and the ticket to the post office to send it registered mail. When I got there I found a parking spot and went to the meter to get a slip. Well, there was a min charge of 1.50 and guess what I had... a paper 20 and 1.40 in change. Hmmm what to do? The post office would close in 30 minutes. I asked a few people for any extra coins they might have but was unsuccessful, so I decided I am superfast I can just run inside send the letter and get out. Yep, dumb idea. It was important that the letter get sent today though. Inside the line took longer than it should have and you can probably guess the end of the story. While paying for one parking ticket, I got another one! What are the chances? We have been here 3 1/2 months and never seen the parking reinforced here in Israel. Apparently now that summer is over they are watching the parking closely. I actually did see the guy who gave me the ticket a few cars ahead and went and talked with him. He was very gracious and said he would recall this ticket but be sure to buy a ticket in the future. I've learned my lesson....

It's my Birthday!!!!

Wendy and Bob (our new friends from Portland who also moved to Israel for a short term assignment) had us over for dinner on Saturday night for a birthday dinner. She made the best chocolate cake ever!!!! Actually the entire meal was fabulous but of course the chocolate part was most memorable :-) After dinner we stayed and played Yatzee and card games. It was a lot of fun.

Today, Wendy came over and we scrapbooked the day away. My first time scrapbooking since I've been in Israel. I got a lot done! I think she did too. This afternoon I picked Ken up from work he had a dozen roses and a present for me (3 bags of PB M&Ms and 2 bags of dark chocolate M&Ms). This was my only request. Actually it was a tall order since you can't get them in Israel. I think he had someone bring them on a business trip from the US, but he won't reveal his source.

For dinner we went to the neighbors (Bears) to BBQ chicken skewers on their grill. I told Ken I didn't want to cook today ;-) It ended up being a big party with the Shermans coming over to visit too. I think I ate too much.

Monday (flying home)

Well, we've had a crazy week and it's hard to imagine it getting much crazier but here's what our Monday looked like :-( We were able to get to the airport and check in for our flight from BCN to Milan, Italy (the first of 3 legs). The man gave us our boarding passes but said we would have to get our Milan boarding passes there because the system wouldn't let him generate them. We asked if there was a problem and he said no, not at all. We asked if our bags would make it to Tel Aviv the final destination and he said Yes, I will try. That answer didn't seem very confident, so we rephrased the question. He showed us the baggage ticket he was putting on that showed TLV so we figured there was nothing else we could do. We did try to clarify that it would go straight through and there was no need for us to pick the bags up in Milan and recheck. No, it should go to TLV. Okay. In Milan we got off the plane and passed baggage claim going to the ticket counter to get our boarding passes. Here is where we learned that our flight wasn't leaving from this airport but from another airport over an hour away in Bergamo. We pointed to the ticket and said the ticket says Milan and we bought this ticket from their website (not orbitz or travelocity). We asked if they had a shuttle to that airport or better yet since they had a flight from this airport straight to Rome if they could put us on one of those flights (well that will cost you 50Euros per person to change your ticket- which quickly rose to 200 Euros per person with additional fees and taxes). Where is your luggage? We answered, the man in Barcelona said it will go straight to TLV. Oh no, if you are going through Bergamo you need to recheck your bags. YIKES. While Ken tried to negotiate a ride to the next airport or a change in flights straight to Rome, I ran downstairs to try and get back into the secured baggage area and rescue our luggage. I finally found someone in an airport uniform that was willing to let me back into the luggage carousel area, but it had been about an hour and no of the carousels indicated the recent Barcelona arrival. I asked around at the desks but no one was helpful. Finally I ended up at the lost baggage area. They asked if I had lost my bags. I said I was looking for it, do you know what carousel it was on. No, you only need to come here if you have lost your bags. Please go look and if you still don't find it you can open a claim here. Talk about the run around here. I stood at each carousel for at least 10 minutes, until I saw the same bag 3 times and moved to the next one. Isn't this a fun story? Finally I went back to the desk and there was someone different there. I showed him my ticket and asked if he could tell if our bags did in fact go to TLV or if I needed to pick them up here. He thought the bags should show up on carousel 4 in a few minutes. So I waited and waited and waited. Finally I saw them come through. Gratzi, Gratzi I said to the man and ran upstairs to see how Ken was doing. So we orginally had a 6 hour lay over which was now more than half gone now and Ken was hitting a dead end at the customer service desk which actually told him "I am not here to help you" and walked away. Uggh. We finally accepted the fact that we need to buy our own tickets to the central bus station and then take another shuttle from their to Bergamo. Racing against the clock we took the 20 minute ride downtown and just barely caught the hour long shuttle to the airport in Bergamo. We were able to check in an hour and half before the flight. The lady asked if we had any bags to check. Hesitantly we said yes, but can you make sure they get to Tel Aviv? The flight from Bergamo to Rome and then Rome to TLV were a bit late but relatively uneventful :-) We were so happy to be back in Israel even if it was 4am. We were even more elated to see our bags in Tel Aviv. Picking our rental car back up from Hertz was not an issue either. We were so thankful for a smooth re-entry. They didn't even detain us at customs like they normally do. We arrived back home just before 6am. There was a big sign on our door in Hebrew that said Welcome Home and inside our neighbors had a few things to get us started for the week. Now for a two hour nap before Ken has to be at work.