Wrapping Up the Adventure

            I’m staring at the calendar trying to figure out if it’s true.  Have I really been home for nearly four weeks?  It’s passing me by in a blur.  I’m way past jet lag, and was I really gone long enough to experience culture shock?  But simultaneously, last time I was in a grocery store and someone was in my way, my instinct was to say, “Sliha” instead of “Excuse me” and when the cashier asked if I wanted the receipt, I spent longer processing which language I needed to respond in than considering the question itself. 

            This coming from someone whose Hebrew vocabulary might be twenty words (plus the numbers).  Emphasis on the might be. 

            Every now and then, something reminds me that I was just in Israel, and even as I catch up with my friends and enjoy easy access to English speakers, my mind reaches back to the experience often.  It’s been snowing from time to time and raining often lately.  Flashbacks to January in Tel Aviv. 

            Despite my promise to never run again after the marathon (just kidding), I ran a half marathon with my friend Katie, in Gloucester last weekend… In a snow storm no less… (About forty degrees Fahrenheit colder than the marathon.  Still fun, but made me rethink all that griping I did about the heat).

            Project Presentation Day is coming up in 2 weeks.  At that point, I’ll be presenting the work I did over there, and as I prepare my little speech about my project, as well as get ready for a mini reunion with Isa (yes, she’s due stateside for a week or so!), the nostalgia threatens to come back in full force, as it also seems to do every time someone posts in the Secret Tel Aviv Facebook group.  Also, I baked Challah last night.  So good. 

            So, as I’ve been promising myself to do since I got home, I’m wrapping up this blog.  Maybe I’ll rekindle it someday—for another adventure to Israel, or elsewhere.  

            I also realize I didn’t really write much about the grad school trip.  It was a great trip, an awesome opportunity, which was jam packed with visits to startups and tourist sites around Israel.  I got to spend some time in Tel Aviv (when it was actually sunny and warm), take a formal tour of Jaffa and hear an Arab man speak about how he grew up with hatred targeted towards Jewish people, but gradually changed his point of view, ultimately marrying one, float in the Dead Sea again (you can never do this too many times), visit the Ayalon Institute (awesome factory to check outà bullets were secretly manufactured here under the noses of the British, hidden by a kibbutz, leading up to the War of Independence in 1948; visit or ask me to find out exactly how), actually see Be’er Sheva, visit a kibbutz (finally) and a factory where they make drip irrigation hoses, visit a wastewater treatment plant, stick a note in the Western Wall and visit Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem) and more. 

           So finally, to cap off the experience, here is a top 17 list of my experiences in Israel (I attempted to put them in order from absolute favorite to general favorites, but it’s a little bit like comparing apples and oranges).  There was more cool stuff but I figured it wouldn’t really be a list of my favorite bits if I included everything.  If you have any questions, feel free to comment or ask questions.  

            I disqualified two things from the list (food and spending time with locals), because those are both givens.  Restaurants like the Brasserie in Tel Aviv or the Quicheria in Givatayim, bakeries with pastries like croissants and rugelach, Ice coffees from Aroma, and quinoa salads from anywhere (that doesn’t use tahini), bagels and dried fruit (especially the pineapple) from the Shuk, meant endless opportunities for deliciousness.  Furthermore, having the opportunity to train for the marathon with a local, go to the Marathon Expo with my supervisor from work, and hang out with Isa and her family, as well as my landlords and coworkers, was a great way to get to understand the intricacies of the culture and the country in general. 

            Here we go, and thank you for your readership over these last several months.  I really appreciate it. 

1. The Tel Aviv Marathon (and the 26 km Mezkemmet in HaYarkon Park) plus all other running done in the area, alone and with locals

2. Dead Sea

3. Yad Vashem

4. Ayalon Institute

5. Ramon Crater

6. Hiking/trail running near Beit Shemesh and Move Betar

7. Kibbutz Hatzerim and Netafim (plant for drip irrigation hoses)

8. Bike tour of Jerusalem

9. The Western Wall

10. Snorkeling in Eilat

11. Mt. Tzfachot Circular Trail

12. Shuk HaCarmel (and Machane Yehuda)

13. The Great Synagogue

14. Mt. Herzl

15. Bahai Gardens and Shrine

16. Rosh Hanikra

17. Jewish-Arab Coexistence Tour of Jaffa

That's all I've got for now.  Thanks for reading!

A Day in Tzfat

Tzfat is in the Northern Galilee region.  It’s hard to believe how dense Israel is with places to visit sometimes, and yet, simultaneously it’s still remarkably small.  I was shocked by how much colder it was up there compared to Haifa and Eilat. I started my day in Tzfat by walking from the hostel up to the Citadel, which overlooks the town.  It’s an amazing landscape in the hills (I swear, all of Israel is hill, sxcept Tel Aiv and Herzliya (thank goodness)).  I walked towards the hill up to Tzfat, had a few false starts on figuring out where I was and eventually ended up at the Citadel, which gave great views overlooking the town as well as tidbits of history about the area.  From there, I walked around the cemetery for a while.

Afterwards, I walked up the steps until I found the Old City and wandered around for a while.  

  

          I was blown away by all the artwork and jewelry for sale in the shops.  I wandered through slowly, having conversations with the people working in the shops.  There were a surprising number of Americans around.  One teased me about being there in the wrong time of year when I inquired over the price of a dreidel.  Another shopkeeper taught me how to blow a shofar.  Another one used to live in New York but has lived in Israel for years now.  She helped me choose a gift for my mom.

            At the visitors center, you can watch a movie about Kaballah, a mystical school of thought that originated in Judaism. 

            Overall, Tzfat is a cool place to spend a day (or part of one) if you’re just looking for somewhere to relax and enjoy. 

I also ran into a friend during my week of travels.  I stumbled across  Nick, the forest ranger from Canada I had gotten to know in Jerusalem a few weeks before.  Together, we randomly decided to head up to Tiberias.   I hadn’t really gotten to see the Galilee much (I had seen it briefly when driving through at the beginning of my stay), so it was cool to just drive along the edge of the sea/lake.

            At the end of the day, we wandered into a grocery store near my hostel and I grabbed some salami, hummus, Challah, and you guessed it, bamba.  Nick and I chatted a little more over our dinner and he experienced chocolate with pop rocks for the first time (and bamba for that matter--> I'm assuming I mentioned that, but it's basically peanut butter puffs (Cheetos texture, with a peanut butter flavor, and in many cases a chocolate center).  

            Early the next morning, it was time to head back to Tel Aviv to meet up with the WPI grad school trip. 

Haifa

          Travel is exciting, as your senses are constantly flooded with exposure to new things, whether it be food, music, activities, history, religion, etc. but it can be daunting sometimes too.  There’s a whole world out there?  How are you supposed to choose?  And when you do, there’s a whole country or region.  What if you never have time or money to make it back out here?  You must pack it all in.  See it all.  How do you do that? 

            Now in the way the modern world works, we Google our destination to narrow down our intended itinerary.  We check out top ten lists and tour guides and pick what seems manageable.  Or alternatively, tour companies charge you a fixed fee (plus add-ons) to zip you around, handling the arrangements (the perceived hard part… and don’t get me wrong, it often is) while you sit back in a tour bus, listen to (or sleep through) a bunch of historical tidbits you’re either entranced by or possibly bored by… They drop you off at the end of the day at your accommodation so you can get a handle on your exhaustion unless they have the evening planned out for you too… And that can be an amazing way to see a country.  It’s crazy how many things and places you can’t partake in without a predetermined plan and big enough group.  And how much time you lose in a day when you’re getting lost or dawdling. 

            Simultaneously there’s a lot you don’t get when seeing the world that way.  I can name a couple of countries—not many, but a few--- where I never got to know a local, where I never had time to just wander...  Because I was in and out on a tour in a couple of days or just sitting on a beach at a resort somewhere. 

            A few weeks ago, when I was in Jerusalem, I met a few people who were casually travelling around.  After long enough, they lost the attitude I sometimes have—the constant need to go, go, go, pack the itinerary so deep, you thoroughly saw it, but did you?  Did you turn your phone off and ride the public transport to the end of the line?  Did you throw your itinerary completely out the window and take off somewhere else?  Did you stop for an hour to sit at a random table in a random library at a not so random university to plug your phone in and write a blog post with a pen and scrap of paper?  (Not to mention that I am literally amazed by my dependence on my phone when traveling, albeit not surprised.  Sometimes, in Israel, it felt like, if my phone were dead, I would just give up every time and take a taxi because it was so hard to navigate otherwise.  Next time I visit, my goal will be to figure out how to navigate without my phone… The answer to this riddle may be a greater fluency in Hebrew).    

            But back to the question of going with the flow instead of sticking to a strict regimen of tourism, in Haifa, I did just that.  At one o’clock, thoroughly exhausted from walking around the city (I didn’t believe everyone when they told me how exhausting it is to walk up the side of a mountain… Seriously, so many steps…), I winged it and went to the Technion, where I walked around, got really jealous of the program they have that allows students to raise golden retriever puppies until they reach adulthood so they can go to training to be seeing eye dogs (because they’re going to be seeing eye dogs, they can take them to class and on public transport… yes please!). 

            After letting my jealousy subside, I walked into the library (WPI’s is so much cooler; just saying) and read the giant display about their Engineers without Borders (we definitely need one of those at WPI).  I thought it was really cool that not only did students at the Technion work on projects in Ethiopia and Nepal, but also in Bedouin towns in the Negev Desert (that desert in the middle of Israel).  In one case, they focused on a Bedouin kindergarten that didn’t have heat.  Because it wasn’t heated, Bedouin mothers couldn’t send their children to school on cold days and as a result, they couldn’t hold down jobs.

 

             As you recall, I had already been to Haifa, albeit incredibly briefly.  One of my biggest motivations for going back there was to see the Bahai Gardens more fully this time around.  Since the lower gardens and the shrine close at noon, I checked out of my hotel early after checking out Shuk Talpiot (no offense, but way lamer than HaCarmel and Machane Yehuda, but still had a few tasty offerings), I meandered slowly towards the gardens, peaking my way in and out of shops, looking for small gifts for family and friends. 

            I honestly knew almost nothing about the Bahai Faith going in.  For one, I assumed it would be this incredibly old religion that I assumed was younger than Judaism but at least stemmed back as far as Christianity or something.  But, it was founded in the 1800s.  I guess, it’s more of a philosophy than anything.  And walking through those gardens, it’s easy to understand how it’s a holy place.  The peaceful tranquility on the side of a mountain.  A place that’s beauty is showcased to tourists from all backgrounds, but has particular portions only open to the Bahai people. 

            After the gardens, I wandered down into the German Colony and had lunch, headed to the Technion and then headed off for my next adventures. 

Eilat

            I think I’ve mentioned my fascination with the ocean (I was a lake kid).  And as a Buffalonian, sun is hard to come by (literally there are tallies of how many days we go without sun a year).  So I was pretty psyched when my flight landed in Eilat on the Saturday night after the marathon.  Yeah, my legs were still incredibly sore and I was pretty beat from the race.  When I left the apartment in Herzliya, I was kind of like, “What did I just do?  Can I please just stay here for three days and sleep?”  But, at the end of the day (week), I was really glad I went.  I had been been planning to go to Eilat for a while.  I had considered doing it on a weekend, but it just seemed like a lot easier to do during my time off, since I had the time to spare.  And I was right.  Eilat is a city on the Red Sea, basically a beach town bordering both Egypt and Jordan, with Saudi Arabia nearby.  It’s about a four and a half hour drive from Tel Aviv, but an hour by plane. 

          I used to think it was important to plan everything letter by letter when traveling.  But, I’m starting to care a lot less about that.  I bought the flight way in advance because it was crazy cheap (warning on that, consider what day you’re leaving and how you’re getting to the airport.  I flew from Ben Gurion, which meant that usually I could have taken the train, but it was a Saturday night.  Yes, Shabbat ends at sunset, but if your flight is at 20:30, you have to be at the airport around 19:00 and the trains won’t have started when you need to leave.  So I took a $50 taxi ride, which meant that my $20 flight just got a whole lot more expensive, but it was still cheaper than it could have been, and it was totally worth it. 

 I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel.  (Yep, no hostel this time; I splurged that week).  I knew that after the race, I’d want some space to myself to recuperate and relax.  For fifty USD a night, the place wasn’t too shabby.  It was a little close to the airport, so you could hear the planes, but for me, that wasn’t a big deal.  When I got there, I spent some time researching where to go the next day before heading to bed.  I’d heard so much about the underwater observatory that I really wanted to go.  Since it was early March, it was still a little bit of the off season, so there were tourists from Israel around (mostly Tel Aviv), some from Europe (several places in Europe offer direct flights to Eilat), looking for a few nice days at the beach, and the stray tour group (Sunday was a group from Virginia and Monday was Canadians from Winnipeg).  So when I first got to the observatory, it wasn’t too packed. It was early, probably 930 or so.  The underwater observatory has a few different attractions.  On one hand, it’s a lot like an aquarium, showcasing sharks and turtles and rare fish and fish from the Amazon and so on… but when you walk on a bridge out into the water, and descend a spiral staircase, it’s a real look into the underwater. 

The underwater observatory is exactly what it sounds like.  When I was a kid in Dubai with my family one winter, they were building an underwater restaurant.  It seemed to me unfathomable.

            But the world is capable of doing all sorts of crazy insane stuff these days.  The underwater observatory is basically an aquarium into the real world.  Instead of looking into a tank at a bunch of fish, you’re the one in the tank.   I saw a bunch of fish I had never heard of but looked cool, and just stood there pondering life (and watching fish) for a while.  When I first got down there not too long after the park opened (maybe an hour or so after), it was pretty sparsely populated (with visitors; there were plenty of fish), and it was just me and a couple families.  After a while, it got harder to get pictures through all the people, and I headed out.  I wanted to catch the shark feeding anyway.     

    Unfortunately, the Coral 2000, which is literally a yellow submarine that you can take right from the observatory for an alternative view of the ocean, wasn’t running that day.  But luckily, your entrance ticket counts for 3 days.

You can see the Coral 2000 barely, behind the tree

Check it out: Jordan is over there (the country)

Eilat is not only known for its warm weather, but for its coral reef.  Tons of Europeans and Israelis will come for shopping (the Promenade/boardwalk is really cool with tons of shops along the way and amusement park rides if that’s your thing) and the beach (although I love Eilat, but Tel Aviv and Herzliya’s beaches were a lot nicer, at least from a sand point of view; I walked along several of Eilat’s beaches and almost all of them were either gravelly or pebbly) and lots go for scuba diving.  I did an intro dive last year in Australia, and I like diving, but I just ran a marathon so I wasn’t looking to break bank (or myself) so I decided just to snorkel.  It was a great choice for someone whose looking for a fast/inexpensive way to get in the water and see some coral and fish. 

            From the observatory, I walked ten minutes to the Coral Beach Nature Reserve.  I rented a snorkel and mask and went snorkeling.  I got insanely close to the coral (not sure if I somehow evaded the swimming lanes or not, but all I know is I was right above it.  I saw trumpet fish, and clownfish (like Nemo!) swimming in the anemones (I had no idea how tiny clownfish were!), some sea cucumbers, and more.  It was absolutely beautiful and entrancing.  At both the underwater observatory and snorkeling, I was struck with the pure simplicity of watching fish be fish, of being so close to something so different from you, and not just one fish, but hundreds, or thousands.  Watching the clam open and close, the blue fish travel in pods, the sea cucumber remain stagnant at the bottom of the sea.  Being one with those fish, so that when they don’t notice you, you’re overcome with questions, all good ones, all striving to understand the world and how it works, the world and why it works, why it is what it is. 

            The truth is, I like nature.  History is cool and everything, but there are times where I just want to get some exercise and experience something that’s a little less educational.  Watch a trumpet fish (even though it scared the heck out of me at first because I don’t know fish at all and thought it was an eel).  Eilat was a great place for that.  I returned to the observatory the next day to take the ride on the Coral 2000.  It doesn’t dive down or anything, but when you board it, you’re already below sea level.  It’s just another way to see the reef, which isn’t necessarily as cool as snorkeling or the observatory, but it was cool to get another perspective.  Afterwards, I took a quick camel ride (touristy I know, but bucket list item I just had to tick off) and snorkeled again at the nature reserve.  I spent the rest of the day at the beach and wandering along the promenade looking into the shops. 

            My last morning, I wanted to give hiking a shot.  It was kind of a struggle to figure out where to start the Mt. ­Tzfachot Circular Trail.  I ended up taking a taxi to the Camel Ranch and promptly took off straight down the wrong road.  Eventually, I realized that I was wandering through the desert in the absolute wrong direction (the closest I got to being lost in the desert on this trip; I knew how to get back but had no idea how to find the trailhead).  

"Lost" in the desert (with 3G and Google Maps)

Walking back towards the Camel Ranch, I was ready to go back, since I wanted to spend a little more time at the beach before hitting the beach, but then against all odds, I figured out that the trailhead was just a few minutes down the other road (if you find the Bedouin style tent you can stay overnight in, you’re right on track).  It was a pretty solid hike once I found it, and the views were pretty sweet as well. 

            Afterwards, it was off to the beach and the next adventures.