Pictures from Jordan and Israel

Our time in this part of the Middle East is drawing to a close. Here are some more pictures from our travels here.

New Jerusalem

As you gathered if you read Matt's last post, the Old City in Jerusalem was fascinating and beautiful but challenging in some ways. The New City in Jerusalem felt like a return to our home planet. A planet where we don't regularly confront issues of religion and identity and tolerance and nationalism and international politics. We were also happy to leave a hostel where our cave/room that was essentially part of the lobby/loud early morning conversation area.

The tourist part of the New City seems to be dominated by the Ben Yehuda shopping street, but there are also quieter places with good bars and restaurants. Although restaurants that served typical Ashkenazi food were not common, we found a friendly neighborhood restaurant--Heimeshe Essen--that served tasty and reasonably priced dinners and take-out.

From right to left: kishke, stuffed carp, sweet and sour cabbage, farfel and Jerusalem kugel (savory, no dairy).

We also enjoyed walking around the different neighborhoods, some ultra-orthodox strongholds, some secular, some historical. In the neighborhood south of the Mahane Yehuda market there are placards describing the lives of the people who lived in the old stone houses. Here's a picture of Matt wondering if he can find the hat that will allow him to pull off this look:

The weather was just about perfect so it was hard to stay inside, but on Thursday we took a great tour of the Knesset (sorry, not allowed to have pictures of that) and spent the rest of the day wandering around the Israel Museum. They have a large model of the Old City in the outdoor sculpture garden that looks so real that when birds land in it, it is disturbing.

Tourist groups admiring the Second Temple Period Old City Model.

To get out of the city for a day, we took one last trip to the Dead Sea area and went hiking at Ein Gedi to some beautiful waterfalls above Wadi Arugot. The water comes bubbling out of the rocks and trees and shrubs grow up around the stream that flows down to the sea.

Green stuff in the desert.

This picture may not look exciting, but fresh water is bubbling up from under this rock outcrop. I'm about to slam my head into the rock trying to scramble out of there.

We're holed up in Tiberias for Shabbat at the moment and starting to plan the last leg of the trip in Turkey and Greece. Hoping all is well with everyone at home.

Holy cities

Tzfat (Safed/Tsfat/Zefat etc....) and Jerusalem are two of the holy cities (or horry shitties as Tuong Lu Kim of South Park might say) for Judaism, and Amanda and I visited them good.

Tzfat is the home of Kabbalah study, a subject only those learned enough in the ways of the religion can begin to embark on their path to whatever it is Kabbalah leads you to. Jerusalem, you've probably heard of that one.

Neither of these traditional spiritual places really struck me. Perhaps part of the problem in Tzfat was the sheets and sheets of rain that poured down during our visit. But I don't think I have a lot of common ground with the folks who are so taken by Tzfat that they decide to stick around. We still tried our best to have fun while we took in a couple of synagogues and art galleries; the day certainly wasn't a total loss.

The old city of Jerusalem is sort of fascinating. It's part museum, part mall, part home, and mostly nuts. This time around, the thing that struck me more than anything is the fact that historical precedence suggests that the odds of Jerusalem being blown to shit again are pretty high. So for me, it is a little hard to get attached to this piece of earth that so many people find to be holy. If anything I think I had anti-Jerusalem Syndrome.

There were certainly some touching moments in Jerusalem. Visiting the Kotel for the first time in a while is still an emotional experience. While we toured the open-air archaeological park next to the Kotel, we saw a small egalitarian bar mitzvah ceremony, which I enjoyed seeing. And after that, we saw a petrified 13 year-old boy being led towards the Kotel by a singing band of Orthodox Jews and Haredim, complete with clarinet and shofar accompaniment. The procession was tailed by curious gentile tourists snapping pictures and dancing along. While I personally have not viewed the marketing material that the foundations use to convince bar mitzvah aged children to come to Israel for their first step into adulthood, I would hazard a guess that this scene is not quite what they show. Nevertheless, it was a rather awesome sight.

This is one of the most well-trodden pieces of land on the planet, and I don't really have much to add. Enjoy our pics with snippets of commentary.

As far as Temple Mount goes, I think we might be best of selling it to China and letting them handle it. If there's one group who might be able to handle the responsibility for everyone, it's an authoritarian communist government. This could also bring up the interesting prospect of performing some archaeology on the Temple Mount.

This is about all we saw in Tzfat. Rain.

After a wet day in Tzfat, we drove north to Agamon HaHula. The valley here was once a marshland that was a major landing spot for migratory and local birds. Israelis conquered the marshland in the early 1950s and converted it to farmland. After a while, the ecologists were successful in pointing out how completely ruinous this was, and part of the land went back to wetlands. Now, a bajillion cranes spend the winter there, amongst many other birds that call it home.

On the recommendation of Dorit and her family, and despite the excessive difficulty in booking one, we took a tour of the underground excavation at the Kotel. Here, we are facing a section of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount that is still underground. This was the street level at the time of the 2nd Temple, about 2000 years ago.

In the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem, some of the doorways are marked by graffiti and posters. This apparently is a celebratory mark for their recent pilgrimage to Mecca.

Here's a mosaic wall in the Jewish Quarter that depicts some well known biblical scenes.

Next up, the newer part of Jerusalem.

Best of SE Asia

Here are a few more pictures from our time in SE Asia.

Best of SE Asia

Mediterranean Israel, Yofi!

We arrived in Tel Aviv to find a beautiful sunset over the Mediterranean and a scramble to navigate one-way streets and mysterious parking signs to find a budget hostel. Most signs are in English, except the ones you really need. Matt reads Hebrew quickly and knows a few modern vocabulary words and some handy torah passages. I read Hebrew slowly, confuse some of the key letters, and recognize "please, thank you, chocolate, I, we, kosher, excuse me, and okay." Because many people in Israel speak beautiful English, we've had trouble increasing our vocabulary but no trouble at all amusing the locals with our attempts to communicate.

I thought that Tel Aviv was a lovely (yofi!) city--modern, interesting architecture, friendly people, cozy bars just waiting for hipsters to arrive. We had a great time walking down the beach to Jaffa, north to the old port, enjoying the sunshine, and trying out bars and restaurants in the different neighborhoods. On Friday morning, the Carmel Market was packed full of people buying groceries for the weekend and we elbowed our way in to a hummus place where they ignored us for a bit then said, "We'll give you something tourists like." To the left is a view of Tel Aviv from Jaffa. I know, looks like California.

We were concerned at first that things would shut down for Shabbat, but apparently this city just keeps on going. We found a great restaurant in the Yemenite Quarter--Hamitbachon. Simple and filling food, one of the most amazing desserts I've ever had. Halvah Parfait. Some variation on Halvah (sweet sesame past candy) + cream + frozen. I wish I could take some with me for everyone at home to try it.

We found ourselves in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood one evening and stumbled on the Tel Aviv brewery. Beer in Israel seems to be hit or miss, and this microbrewery was no exception. But for the sake of Matt's happiness, I was glad to see that the idea of good local beer is on peoples' minds, and there's room to grow. Reminds us what a special place the Pacific Northwest is. And that it takes some practice in creative nonfiction writing to avoid ending sentences with "is."

From Tel Aviv, we took the train up to Haifa. I have a childhood friend there who I wanted to visit and we were curious to see Haifa. Lonely Planet makes it sound like Utopia. My friend Dorit and her family lived in New York for a year when we were both in the 7th grade, which makes it almost 20 years since we've seen each other (though we quickly discovered that neither of us has changed much since we were 12--not sure exactly what that means about us). Despite having almost no idea what kind of person I'd turned into other than clues from Facebook, Dorit and her husband Eran offered to put us up and happily showed us around their part of the world. Haifa is one of the most livable places I've been, and the surrounding area was also beautiful. We went on a hike on Mt. Carmel through rocky hills, cow pastures, ancient stone foundations, F-16s flying overhead, and meadows of irit and calenit flowers.

View from Mt. Carmel over olive tree farms.

Eran, Dorit, Amanda and Matt--Valentines Day double date (by accident--surprised to see that Israeli restaurants and businesses are pushing that) at an Irish Pub in downtown Haifa.

Whereupon We are mistaken for Modern Orthodox

We're back in a fully Westernized country, with all of the pros and cons associated with such a place. After spending a few weeks in countries where meeting our day-to-day needs sometimes felt like a struggle, traveling in Israel is both refreshing and also kind of too easy. Yesterday, we had a few tasks we were hoping to take care of, and we were able to complete them all within a few hours while walking around Tel Aviv, and still have the entire afternoon to walk around new neighborhoods, see the sunset, go out for dinner, etc. Now, it almost feels as though we are just toodling about in an alternate USA; somehow the little things seem slightly less remarkable.

Amanda and I walked into Israel from Jordan across the Yitzhak Rabin crossing to Eilat, where we rented a car and started making our way up north to Tel Aviv. Along the way, we stopped at Timna Park, which has an array of fascinating geological formations, ancient art on desert walls, 6000 year old copper mines, and an artificial lake. It sort of reminded us of Wadi Rum had it been done American style.

Amanda climbs in the copper mines

From Timna we made our way to Mitzpe Ramon, a town in the middle of the Negev on the edge of the Maktesh Ramon. The maktesh is a giant crater that was formed by erosion; to us it seemed more of an abrupt ridgeline than crater but that certainly didn't take away from the cool desert hiking within. Upon arrival in Mitzpe Ramon, we found a surly, empty hostel offering us a room for well over $100, and a nice but also empty hotel for more than that. Hoping to not spend more than $100/night, we remembered reading something about being able to stay on an alpaca farm outside of town. With our trusty rental car Shittim, we found the alpaca farm and secured a more affordable place to stay. It ended up being pretty nice digs; they have small cabins for rent that are spitting distance from the alpacas.

Matt admires the white rocks in Maktesh Ramon

Amanda admires the residents of the alpaca farm

After the alpaca farm and a day of hiking in the crater, we headed down to Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea where we basically had no good options for accomodations and stayed at the overpriced Ein Gedi Kibbutz. At least this allowed us to easily see Masada and the Dead Sea the next day. On the way out of the kibbutz to Masada, a nice woman from Ukraine/Minnesota/Sweden asked us to give her a ride over to the hostel, and we chatted with her. We hadn't showered or changed our clothes in a little bit, so we were covering our hair. She mistook us for modern Orthodox Jews trying to decide to make aliyah. You can judge for yourself if you think we look like that.

Is this the face of Modern Orthodox?

We decided to spring for the Masada Museum, which was worthwhile but a bit strange. Those of you with further interest in museumology will get a fuller explanation when we return (in short, 3-D is not always the best medium for explanation).

On my Taglit trip to Masada, we were roused from an unrestful sleep at a Bedoiun camp to make the pre-dawn march up to the top without much background on what was really up there; even after seeing it once I had little appreciation for how developed the mountaintop was in its day. This time around, Amanda and I forewent the sunrise experience and instead hiked up mid-morning. We had a chance to explore most all of the ruins at the top, and I felt like I had a much more enjoyable and complete experience.

After taking in Masada, we hit a new low at the Dead Sea.

Trust us, this was the best picture of us at the Dead Sea

Post float, we drove to Tel Aviv during rush hour. Maybe it was a light traffic day, but I did not find the traffic to be overwhelming or the drivers to be really batshit insane. The one really annoying habit of the locals is that they will lay on the horn the second a light turns green. We've been able to wait thousands of years to return to the holy land, but you are sitting on a green light for 0.2 seconds longer than necessary...

More on Tel Aviv to come.

Welcome to Jordan, You are Welcome

I'm sorry to condense the past week of travel in Jordan into one blog entry--internet access was a bit difficult--and I won't be able to do justice to the place. We started off in Amman, a busy city that seems designed for hot summers. Most people were glued to their televisions watching what was going on in Egypt. Those in the hospitality industry assured us, "Jordan is safe. We love our king. He already made the changes in the government we needed. He is like our God." But people were obviously inspired, empathetic, and on edge. Travelers at our hotel gathered around BBC in the evenings to see what was going on. BBC in Jordan has weird commercials.

Amman was one of those places where it is hard to warm up in the winter until they start feeding you massive amounts of rice and meat. This picture on the left shows a dish called mensaf. I like most desserts but loved the sweets, variations on baklava, some with shredded wheat, some with cheese, another that was sort of cornmeal dumplings soaked in honey. As far as we could tell, they didn't have different names for the different sweets, and thought we were strange for asking.

We spent a great day visiting Roman ruins in Jerash and Umm Qais, and the Ajlun Castle Islamic ruins in NW Jordan. Those arches really hold up.

Hadrian's Arch at Jerash

Next stop was Wadi Musa and Petra. I expected Petra to be cool but figured it was a big tourist trap and the crowds and cheese factor might take away from the experience. But it turned out to be an easy place to get lost and escape from donkey and camel rides and kiddos wanting to sell ugly jewelry. Petra was more than cool, often I could barely believe what I was seeing. The natural geological phenomena alone were incredible, and the Nabataean sandstone monuments seemed to be growing right out of the rocks. As with Angkor Wat, millions of years of archaeology grad school did not give me much of an enlightened perspective on this site, but I was grateful to have had the chance to experience Petra.

The Monastery at Petra

From Wadi Musa we traveled to Wadi Rum (Valley of the Moon) and had a 4 x 4 tour of the desert there. Wadi Rum is a protected area and you need a guide to take a camel ride, 4 x 4 tour, or backpacking trip there. Some similarities to the North American Great Basin--juniper trees, something that looked like rabbitbrush, and the Bedouin make sage tea though I didn't notice any growing there. Sandstone and granite rock formations--in some places, the sandstone looks like it is being melted by the wind.

We're on a natural bridge, not looking down.

Melty rock.

The last place we visited in Jordan was Aqaba--an easygoing seaside town where you can drink coffee, eat fish, and watch families enjoying their vacations. Our hotel room had a view out over the Red Sea to Eilat, Israel.

Matt here - If you are only going to learn one bit of English, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a better piece of language to master than "Welcome to Jordan, you are welcome!" Ok, maybe "Welcome to Jordan, where there is as much free beer as you want!" but you get the picture.

Bangkok and travel flexibility

Imagine a botanist standing on the outside of a large field. Apparently, in this field, there is a really cool plant that is worth seeing. The botanist, interested in seeing the plant, wanders into the tall grasses of the field. What he cannot see is all of the burrs, stinging nettles, and brambles underfoot that tug and sting and scrape at them every step of the way. It isn't really clear where this amazing plant is, and maybe he finds it, maybe not. Exasperated either way, he leaves the field, and as it turns out all of the burrs and thorny plants stuck on him also sting as they are removed. At this point, he is wondering why he even entered the field in the first place, perhaps even questioning why he wanted to be a botanist at all. This is Bangkok.

The place stressed me out to the max. Seems to me to be a city full of really unhelpful people who want tourist money. I just never felt welcome at all. On top of that, we found out on arrival in Bangkok that the Egyptian economy was collapsing and that people were taking to the streets. Amanda and I had both been looking foward to our time in Egypt, and to find out at the last minute that it would not be possible to visit there was not particularly welcome news.

I'm stll pretty angry and disappointed with our time in Bangkok, and to dwell on it any more is a bit of a waste. Needless to say, I hope to never see that city again.

While we were saddened to lose Egypt as a destination on our trip, our relatively flexible plans allowed us to shuffle things around just a little bit. After spending nearly a day with the mostly worthless Thai employees of Kuwait Airways, we were able to get them to change our tickets from Cairo to Amman and we ended up with more time in Jordan than previously expected.