Pictures


Part I:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6ir-KNG-o

Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oTSeGO62aI

Petra, Jordan

No comment other than YOU MUST SEE IT FOR YOURSELF! Click the picture

Mel's Trip, Day 7

Today I ventured out on my own again, this time to Jaffa, a very, very old port town that is now incorporated within Tel Aviv. It was about a 20 minute walk to Jaffa from the hotel via a scenic walkway along the Mediterranean Sea. Because yesterday's storm had still not quite passed, the waves were a little crazy and were crashing along the rocks beneath the walkway. I did my best to stay dry as I walked to Jaffa, but I got sprayed anyway. I made it to my destination and wandered about the town. Two things that Jaffa are known for are its art galleries and the flea market. After touring the visitor's center to learn about the history of Jaffa, I wandered through some of the art galleries located in some of Jaffa's oldest buildings. I'm not a huge art person so I didn't stay long. Then I walked over to the flea market. Now, I'm not much of a flea market person either, so I don't really know how flea markets are set up. But let me tell you what Jaffa's flea market has to offer. Honestly, it looked like some vendors found whatever they could find in their house to sell and just laid it out on the sidewalk. Sometimes, the goods weren't even on a sheet or blanket - just on the sidewalk. And they sold the most random things - from individual pieces of silverware to books to knick-knacks, even computer parts. I stayed at the flea market for a short while, then strolled the streets surrounding the flea market to browse through the shops. I found a shop that had a big selection of pashminas (shawls/wraps) and started looking. The shop owner came to me and started speaking Hebrew. Then he realized I didn't speak Hebrew and did his best to communicate with me in what little English he knew. And I did my best to talk to him in Hebrew (with the 3 or so words that I knew). I picked out some pashminas to buy and so we moved on to discuss price. As I was buying several pashminas the owner offered a discount, but I summoned up my best bargaining skills and got him to lower the price even more. Apparently bargaining is the thing to do in Jaffa - never settle on the first price. I was quite proud of myself for that. As many of you know I am very non-confrontational, so reasoning with someone to get my way is just not my gig. :) I then walked back to the hotel to wait for Nick to get off work. Shortly after he got off work we went out to dinner - back to Jaffa for me. He took me to another place he been before. See the blog post titled "20 Dishes". The meal was quite good. And yes, I did try the testicles. Not bad! Unfortunately, toward the end of the meal I started to lose my sense of taste/smell, as I'm coming down with a cold. Hopefully this cold won't deter me from enjoying the rest of this vacation.

Mel's Trip, Day 6

Today is Election Day, which is a national holiday here in Israel. That means that most people have the day off, including Nick. Unfortunately, today a huge storm rolled through the city, so the weather was not conducive for outdoor activities. We were planning on visiting one of the vineyards here, so we went down to the market and bought some cheese, meat, bread and olives to take with us to the vineyard for a little picnic. We went back to the hotel and called the vineyard because we weren't sure if it would be open (being that it was Election Day). Good thing we called, because it was closed. So we stowed away our picnic lunch in the tiny hotel room refrigerator and headed for the mall. We went to a different mall than the one I had gone to yesterday. It was extremely busy since most everyone was off work. We didn't stay too long at the mall, then we caught a taxi back to the hotel. We ate dinner at a neighborhood burger joint. Nick and I shared a lamb/beef burger, which was quite delicious. We ended the night having drinks at the hotel bar downstairs, where we chatted with an American from Chicago who is here for work. We also watched the election results come in. The race was too close to count at the end of the night. It turns out that one of the candidates running for Prime Minister was actually having her post-election day party in our hotel, so there were a lot of people at the bar who had just come from her party. It was definitely interesting to witness another country's Election Day.

Mel's Trip, Day 5

Today I ventured out into the streets of Tel Aviv on my own, since Nick had to work. After a leisurely buffet breakfast downstairs in the hotel restaurant, I got dressed and headed out. My first stop was the Carmel Market, where vendors sell everything like fresh produce, meat, cheese, spices, olives, candy, pastries, home goods, and even cheap shoes and clothes. It's a noisy and busy place. Vendors shout out what they are selling and you will even see the occasional argument between vendor and customer. I think people come here to buy their groceries, so there aren't very many grocery stores around here. I walked through the market and down the street a little ways until I got to the mall, called the Dizengoff Center. The mall was pretty big and pretty standard as far as malls go. I was really excited about coming here because I knew it had one of the stores I used to like to go to in San Francisco, called Zara. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Zara, it's a pretty trendy men's and women's clothing store based out of Spain. You can find Zara in several countries, but unfortunately not in Oregon. Since I hadn't been to Zara in a few years I of course had to buy something! So I made my purchase and moved on to the other stores. I must admit I was a little nervous about going in to some of the stores because they started speaking to me in Hebrew. Most of the people here know at least some English, but I feel bad about not being able to communicate with them at all in Hebrew. So I kept the conversation to a minimum. I walked around the mall a bit more and made my way back.

I went back through the Carmel market because Nick asked me to buy some fruit for him for breakfast. I picked out some apples and bananas and bought a falafel sandwich for myself for lunch (a good-sized pita bread stuffed with falafel and veggies for only 12 shekels = $3 - what a deal!) and went back to the hotel because my feet hurt from all the walking. I took a break, ate my sandwich and ventured out again to sit at a cafe, have some coffee, write about my day and do some people-watching. One funny thing to note about Israel is that there are stray cats roaming around everywhere. As I'm sitting here writing there are a few cats wandering close to me, hoping I'll drop some food on the ground for them.

Tomorrow is election day, and most people will have the day off. It will be interesting to see what happens here.

Mel's Trip, Day 4

Today we went up north and visited the towns of Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, and Mt. Beatitudes. These are all northeast of Tel Aviv and close to one another in distance and it took us a couple of hours to get there. We first stopped in Nazareth, which was the town where Mary was from and where Jesus spent some time. The main attraction in Nazareth is the Church of the Ascension. This is reportedly the site where the angel Gabriel came to Mary to inform her of her destiny, although different Christian denominations have different beliefs on the exact location. Outside the church is a courtyard containing mosaics dedicated to Mary, created by various artists around the world. The church grounds were amazingly not busy, so we took our time looking around at all the art. We came across a couple of Indian gentlemen who worked for the UN and wanted to have our picture taken with us (really mostly with Nick). They approached Nick first because he looked Japanese and they thought he was with the UN as well. Apparently there are a number of Indian and Japanese UN workers in Israel right now - we came across other Indian UN workers at the Dead Sea yesterday too. Even though Nick explained to them that he wasn't with the UN, they wanted their picture with him anyway, and then they wanted a picture with me too. After the mini photo session we made our way inside the church. It's a very large church with an atypical setup. It has two levels - the upper level is the main church and the lower level consists of older churches that the new church was built upon, and also the cave where the Angel appeared to Mary. We just about had the place to ourselves, so we took our time in here. As we were making our way out, we saw a horde of Korean and African tourists making our way to the church. Good timing on our part. After the church we stopped into a bakery to get some snacks for the road, and then we made the short drive to Cana.

Cana, as you may remember, is the site of a wedding that Jesus attended and where he performed his first miracle by turning water into wine. There wasn't much to see in Cana except for a church built in honor of Jesus' miracle, called the Wedding Church. I thought for a moment how cool it would be to have your wedding at the Wedding Church. Maybe just a little hokey, but kinda cool. Again, when we got there the church was deserted. We went inside and looked around for a bit. It wasn't nearly as large as the Church of the Annunciation, so we really didn't spend a lot of time there. Afterward we went to the souvenir shop and browsed but didn't buy anything. Just as we were leaving an African tour group was coming into the church. Again, good timing. We left Cana and drove toward the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee is rather small. You can see all the way across. The first town we got to on the Sea was Tiberias, which seemed to be a vacation type town for Israelis. We went past Tiberias and drove north along the Sea until we got to the Mount of Beatitudes. This is the hill where Jesus is said to have preached the Sermon on the Mount ("Blessed are the poor in spirit..."). Today there is a church on the hill. The grounds were quite lovely and had a nice view of the Sea of Galilee, so we took some time to reflect and pray there. As with the other sites we visited today, there were very few visitors to the site.

Next we went to Capernaum, which is another town on the Sea. It is the hometown of St. Peter and also another place where Jesus spent a lot of time. We visited the church there, and right next to it were the ruins of an ancient synagogue. That was pretty neat to see. I've realized that some of my favorite things to see on this trip are ruins. It's amazing that something so old can still be somewhat standing. This place was also deserted - besides us, there was only another couple touring the site. We then went down the street to the Greek Orthodox church in Capernaum. If you've ever seen a Greek Orthodox church, you know that they are very ornately decorated on the inside. This one was no different. There were more people at this church, so we stayed only for a little while.

Our last stop was for dinner in Tiberias. We ate at a nice restaurant on the waterfront called Decks. As it was a little early for dinner as far as Israeli standards go, we were the only people in the restaurant. When we got there they were actually setting up for a bat mitzvah, so all the seats indoors were reserved. Fortunately they had some tables outside and were able to accommodate us. We had a fabulous dinner which included duck breast and lamb, and then we made the two-hour trip back to the hotel in Tel Aviv. We really lucked out today because we saw some really amazing sites but didn't have to fight any crowds to get through any of them.

Mel's Trip, Day 3

Today we went to the Dead Sea. It was about a 2 hour drive from Tel Aviv. Nick wanted to take a different route to the Dead Sea than the one he had traveled before - as his company told him to avoid the West Bank, he drove all the way around the West Bank the last time and this took 3-4 hours. He's no longer afraid of driving through the West Bank, and for that I am glad that we could save some time. To get to the Dead Sea via the West Bank you must first drive through Jerusalem and across the border into the West Bank. Once across the border the scenery changes as you are entering the Judean Desert. This is the desert where Jesus wandered for 40 days and 40 nights. It's typical desert scenery - big sand/rock dunes, sparse vegetation. We also saw some small villages here and there in the hills, with fragile homes made of wood and tin. What was ironic was that several of these homes also had satellite dishes mounted on top. Go figure. I wanted to stop on the side of the road and take some pictures of these villages as you don't see this every day, but I was worried that I would get shot at, so I refrained from the picture-taking. We also saw some camels in the desert, another thing you don't see every day, so that was interesting. My goal before I leave Israel is to ride a camel - I hope I can work that out somehow!

En route to the Dead Sea we left the West Bank and crossed back into Israel, which meant a stop at the border. We got to the border and weren't sure what to do, as we saw a guard (armed, of course) and a rope tied across the road prohibiting us from crossing. So we told the guard where we wanted to go and he let us through. Basically he untied the rope from the post and let us go past, and that was it. The border checkpoints seem to just be a formality - there really isn't much difficulty going in and out of the West Bank for non-Israelis and non-Palestinians, but the Israelis want to make it seem like a daunting task.

Shortly after the border we made it to Ein Gedi, a city on the Dead Sea that has a park with access to the sea and also a spa down the road. We got to the park and made our way toward the water. We set our stuff down on the rocks by the sea and got in. I was so careful not to get any water on my face or in my mouth as I had heard that it was pretty darn salty and tasted horrible. Once in the water we were floating! It was definitely a different feeling than swimming in the ocean. The Dead Sea is so dense that when you float on top, much of your body is above the water. We floated in the water for a bit and then got out. Nick went off to find some mud to put on me - apparently the mud in and around the sea has healing properties and is very good for your skin. Lots of people around us were slathering this stinky mud on them, so I figured why not? Nick also went to look for some salt crystals as our friend Ali requested that we take more close-up pictures of them. I wanted to try taking some home to her so she could see them in person. Unfortunately, the place we were at didn't really have any of the cool salt crystals, so that was a bust. Nick did find some mud, though, and had fun putting it on my arms. He didn't have enough for my whole body, so just the arms. We went back in the water one last time, since we didn't know if or when we'd ever be back to the Dead Sea. Then we showered off the salty water and got dressed, and ate lunch at the little cafeteria that was on site. I must say it wasn't our most fabulous meal, but we were hungry and there was nothing else to eat. After eating we got in the car and drove home. And we (or maybe just me) smelled like mineral mud all the way back to the hotel.

For dinner we ate at a steak place near the hotel. Nick and I shared a small filet (portions are rather large here, so sharing is common) and let me tell you, it was probably the best steak I have ever had. Nick has eaten here once or twice already before taking me here, so he had a chance to meet the owner and learn a little more about the beef. The owner goes out to local farms and personally chooses the cattle that he wants for meat. He then ages the beef on site. It was absolutely delicious. The meat was so good that I was able to eat it medium-rare - I usually order my steak medium. It was truly an enjoyable meal. After dinner we went back to the hotel, our bellies full. Today was another memorable and fun day.