The rest of the Israel trip….

Other than that final day, our week and half road trip around Israel went off without a hitch. This is one of the few trips I’ve been on where I wasn’t quite ready to go home at the end of it. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that it is still Ramadan in Jordan and Ramadan just stinks if you are not a Muslim. Our trip began in Tel Aviv for two nights, which was great. It is a big, modern city located along the Mediterranean shores. It is basically a beach city and I love beach cities! J spent a lot of time touring the several museums there. K and I made it to a couple but I wasn’t feeling the greatest so other than my daily trips to find the bagel and lox I have been craving for months (and surprisingly not an easy thing to find in Israel!) we laid pretty low. Israel is very expensive so we didn’t shop at all, hotel rooms all run over $300 and that bagel with cream cheese will cost you a good 10 bucks!

From Tel Aviv we spent a day driving to some historic places, Tel Megiddo where the Biblical Armageddon is said to take place, and then back up to the Sea of Galilee to stop at the Mount of Beatitudes, which we missed on an earlier trip. We made it to Haifa after a long day in the car only to find it one of the most difficult cities I have ever had to navigate around. Haifa reminded me a lot of Oakland. Lots and lots of hills and they were all piled on by apartments and homes. Finally, we found our hotel and the first thing I noticed upon checking in was the sign and arrow pointing to the “Shelter”. Hmm… hurricanes? Later I learned Haifa had been rocketed by Hezbollah in 2006. This made me feel great when sleeping on the 17th floor in the tallest building in Haifa! The highlight of our two nights there was taking K to the zoo, which she was crazy about. Poor girl hasn’t seen a zoo since San Diego almost a year ago. They just don’t seem to do zoos in the mid east. We also took a trip up north to the old town of Akko which I know had some historical importance to it but I just cannot remember what it was! Other than that, I was not a real fan of Haifa, way too many hills!

Now, Herzliya, that is a place I could live! We spent the next four nights there while J attended a conference on Counter-Terrorism (this is a topic that will keep you awake at night). He had asked me earlier whether I would consider living in Israel and I thought “no” at the time. Four days in Herz. was enough to convince me I was wrong (given Iran remains a nuclear-free state that is). It was a beautiful town on a great stretch of beach just twenty min. north of Tel Aviv. I was not exactly looking forward to this part of the trip because I knew that J would have some long days and I’d be stuck trying to entertain K in a hotel room. Boy was I in for a nice surprise! They upgraded us to an amazing room, large; three flat screens including one over the bathtub (nice touch!) also had a large patio with a private hot tub. My four days there felt like I had died and gone to heaven! We just swam and relaxed, I only left the hotel once and that was enough. I kept entertained by meeting the Jewish travelers who were vacationing at the hotel, mostly from the UK and US. How nice it was to be in another world for a few days!

From Herzliya we headed back to Jerusalem for one final night. We did not have much left to see in Jerusalem but as it turned out, we had saved the best for last. We started our tour at Yad Vashem, the world famous holocaust museum. It was an unforgettable experience to say the least. I have always had a minor obsession with WW2 history and visited many memorials, museums and camps including Auschwitz (which is another indescribable place!) but Yad Vashem was special. The detail that went into the exhibits and the stories that they told were beyond moving. I spent an hour trying to hold back tears only to lose it in the children’s memorial commemorating the loss of a half million children. When I walked out and saw K running up to me I could only hug her a little harder and longer thinking of all of those parents who watched their children murdered. After visiting the Old City of Jerusalem this should be everyone’s next stop. Incidentally, all of the Jewish museums we visited were top notch; they obviously have some mighty donors!

Later in the evening, we decided to venture out on a long walk to an ultraorthodox neighborhood called Mea She’arim. Shabbat was going to start soon and we had heard this was an interesting place to watch the hustle of it all. Boy was it interesting! We walked and walked thru the neighborhood surrounded by dozens of men and families out walking to services, special dinners or the Western Wall. The women were all dressed up very conservatively and the men and boys had long ringlets of hair hanging near their ears. The adult men all wore fur hats and robe-like coats. We must have walked for an hour just observing people. They all ignored us, but for us it was fascinating.

After that, we went back to our hotel and ate their Fri. evening Shabbat dinner. This included the sweetest red wine I have ever tasted, almost like syrup. Also lots and lots of bread. There were more loaves of rye than I’d ever seen. Once Shabbat starts the Observant are prohibited from doing any work at all. This means you can’t press the button on the elevator or even open your hotel room with a normal key. The hotel solved these issues by stopping the elevator on every floor and providing electronic keys that automatically opened the door. When I say no work gets done, I mean no work! It was almost amusing to watch. The Kosher food habits also changed and I don’t understand it all but I do know that I couldn’t get my daily cappuccino because it was Shabbat or even order a pizza.

We talked to some locals at the Shabbat dinner; I wanted to know specifically how they dealt with the safety concerns. Living in Jerusalem is like living in a time bomb. Eventually something (or someone) will go off. They told us that we were visiting during a relatively quiet time (thank goodness) but they also said that could change at any moment. They felt reassured by all of the checkpoints, the guards, the separation wall etc. and were especially proud of the Jewish people’s resiliency. I guess I should also mention that in Israel every time you walk into anywhere they check your bags. Even simple restaurants and often they add on a “security fee” to your bill because everywhere you go you will see a guard out front standing watch. Let’s just say there are a lot of guns and guards in Israel!

On our final day, we drove down the Dead Sea highway to nearly the end of the sea and visited Masada. The location of the famous stronghold there against the Romans where eventually all of the Jewish rebels committed suicide rather than be taken alive as Roman slaves. It’s a huge complex up on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. We chose to ride the cable up because there was no way we were going to hike that huge hill with K along. There were many ruins on the top and it had a spectacular view.

Masada is famous for the affect it has on the Jewish psyche -or so they say- the never give up attitude! Israel is such a fascinating country and the disappointing thing is after talking to all of the people J did on this trip, he came away with the impression that the two-state solution for peace will not be happening anytime soon. He heard former PM Benjamin Netanyahu speak (who incidentally may take over after Olmert) and he is against a Palestinian state. Olmert, by the way, is accused of swiping money from various charities including the Holocaust Museum and funds for Handicapped Children! Wow, that’s pretty low!

Two other things fascinated me about Israel. It is an incredibly diverse country with an immigrant population from all over the world. Recently they have had two huge population waves come from Russia and Ethiopia. It’s diversity in culture is felt everywhere. The second is the Hebrew language. I was amazed to learn that it has only been used for “everyday” conversation since the late 1800’s when the process of resurrecting it from a two thousand year dormancy began. When they decided to make Hebrew the official language, they needed to come up with all sorts of words to describe modern things. Now over 7 million people speak Hebrew. Lucky for us though, despite everything being in Hebrew we had no trouble finding English speakers. The only word I managed to learn was “Shalom” or Hello. That's our trip in a nutshell, for those of you who managed to stay with me this long (Grandma!) :) Next I’ll post some photos!