Day 10 & 11 - The country that Michael built

It was nice to sleep in an air-conditioned hotel after one night in that god-damned hostel that sounds like the inside of a bass drum half the night. But, of course, that didn't last seeing as we had to get up at 5am to get our tired butts to the airport.
We caught a taxi in the humid morning and it took around 30 minutes to get there. After arguing with a taxi driver who "didn't have 10 shekels" but then he happened to come across a whole bunch of them somewhere in his taxi, we loaded up and checked in, only to be questioned thoroughly on why we were in the United Arab Emirates, what we did there, where we stayed, how long we were there fore, where we are going now, how long we were in Israel for, what colour our underwear was and if we received any packages from strangers (because that's what we do).

We finally got through the long process of getting our bags checked, our passport checked, our bags checked again and boarder our Air Jordanian flight to Amman. The flight was somewhat smooth and it took only 30 minutes before we reached Amman.
Like everything else at the airport today, our luggage took it's time to get to us, but that was ok since they have free WiFi and was happy to see the Storm score. When our luggage arrived we'd found the lock on the main section of Danni's bag had been cut off/broken into but nothing was taken.
Very disconcerting.

With our luggage in tow, we exited the airport and found our driver holding a sign with our name, and feeling like superstars we were lead to his car (which was very un-superstar-like). He drove us about 25 - 30 minutes out of Amman airport into Madaba.

Madaba is similar to Israel in that it is pretty dirty, the people love treating the streets like a rubbish bin, but still retains the ancient style. We checked into our pretty nice room, with the smallest bathroom ever invented and went for a walk around the city.
Initially we went the wrong way that lead to no where but come across a couple of American and Jordanian girls who took us into the city centre and we got our bearings. Madaba is a pretty nice place, once you look past the rubbish, and the people are really friendly except everyone loves beeping their horns. It's pretty damn annoying.
We stopped off for lunch and had a delicious Chicken Fajita, with chips and a drink for a grand total of $5 AU, Danni had hot dog, also with chips and a drink for the same price. We were in our glee to see prices so cheap after the fairly expensive Israel.
After lunch we grabbed a bottle of water ($1.20 AU) and headed back to the hotel to do the laundry and have a 'nap' which ended up going for 3 hours. With the sun setting, we decided to try something else for dinner and found the Queen Ayola Restaurant which had won some awards with tripadvisor for their food.

They did not disappoint. I ordered a burger and Danni had a Chicken Zinger (basically a hot chicken roll) with chips and a drink, again for $5 AU as well as Halloum Cheese and chicken wings. Absolutely delicious.

With dinner finished, we headed back to our hotel but stopped off to get some Jordanian desserts, some sort of cake drizzled in lemon syrup (freakin' nice!) and a Almond, coconut and lemon slice. Danni loved it, I didn't mind it but preferred the other one.

The one of the left is heaven drizzled in lemon sauce.

All in all, a nice, relaxing day. The weather was awesome, we got to explore Madaba and got some errands done before we start checking out the extended area of Jordan.


Day 11 - Bad news and Shawarma

Awoke to another sunny Jordanian day, not a cloud in the sky except those in Egypt. We received the dreaded email that our Egyptian tour was not going ahead.

We had some options, but it’s a pain to get it done.

Let the fun times begin.

We had breakfast and decided the options we could do and finally, after about 3 hours of searching and planning we have decided to stay a couple more days in Aqaba and do some diving in the Red Sea, head back to Amman and then jump on a tour through Turkey on the 15^th, head back to Egypt for a couple of days, hopefully to see the Pyramids and then on to Kenya on our original flight (which also has changed).

The tour is booked, now we just need to book the flight from Amman to Turkey and then Turkey to Egypt.

Aside from the tour planning and the annoying attempts to get through to G Adventures to finalise the tour, we relaxed the day as best we could and had another awesome lunch, I had a kebab sandwich and then for dinner I had a Shewarma.

Tony Stark was right on the money wanting to try Shewarma’s, they are freakin’ amazing. The one I had was chicken in a grilled Turkish roll. A-maz-ing.

We also had Sheaklesh, a spicy salad dish and a pastry stuffed with shredded beef.

Also, Jordanian’s know how to make a pastry. We stopped off to get some lunch for tomorrow (pretzel for me) and also got to taste a doughball dunked in some sort of honey, kind of like a greek doughnut and another dough stick covered in honey, coconut and other tasty stuff.

Unfortunately they ran out of the cake drenched in lemon, but we did get a tray of cakes for about 1JD.

Seriously, the country is worth visiting for the food alone.  

Day 8 & 9 - Don't worry this one doesn't have churches

Day 8 - Attempting to walk on water

A pleasant night lead into a pleasant morning where we woke in our Jerusalem hotel and went to breakfast. After smuggling out pastries like a parent smuggling out a child during a Rwandan Genocide, we waited for the bus to pick us up and take us to Masada, Israel's most popular paid tourist destination.
The tour took us out into Judaean Desert where it was so very very hot. I don't know how the Road Runner and cactuses live out here. We drove past a very inviting Dead Sea out to fortification built on a mountain.

Needs more air-conditioning.

King Herod, or Herod the Great, who was apparently a massive dickhole, built the fortification around 37 BC because he felt like it was a good idea to put his people to work in the middle of a desert on top of a mountain without a crane...or even water.
The site is most famous for the Siege of Masada, a piece of history where 15,000 Romans decided that the 960 rebel Jewish living in Masada (known as the Sicarii) had been living their lofty lifestyle enough and it was time to be slaves to the almighty Roman empire. So, they attacked, and channelling his best Herod, the leader of the Roman Army got his men to build a circumvention wall (basically a protection wall) and then a ramp up the mountain (which took 8 months to build) to attack. Once the ramp was completed, the People's Leader decided the ramp wasn't enough, and thought "let's build a battering ram and get people to push it up an incline of some ridiculous angle".
All this hard work was for nought as when they broke into the citadel they found 960 dead bodies, and their Christmas bonus with it. It turns out that the Jewish rebels had set their citadel ablaze, except the food stores, and had the oh-so-awesome job of killing their family. Then they had people draw names and the remaining 10 would kill each other until one remained who would have to kill himself (apparently a no-no in Jewish faith).

And all the lazy ones had to carry these rocks up the mountain and pile them like so...just kidding

The reason they did this was that they thought they would have a lot more than 960 people to rebel against the Roman's, however since people had better things to do than oppose one of the greatest Empires ever, they decided it was God telling them 'Hey, you did your best but you made a mistake. Best you kill yourself' (classic God). So they did.

Also they didn't want to be slaves.

The site itself is pretty awesome. Still retaining some of the structure and we got to see various, half kept buildings, like a bathhouse, storage room, and got a great view of the desert and Dead Sea.

After Masada, we stopped for lunch at the bottom of the mountain. Although we didn't eat there, it had a McDonalds, because nothing spells burgers and fries than the middle of the desert. We ate our makeshift lunches on the tour van as we headed to our next destination. The lowest point on Earth, the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea was awesome fun. We got changed into our swim wear and walked down to the Sea, which really should be called 'Salty Lake', since it is neither Dead nor a Sea. We were told that we shouldn't drink the water because it can potentially kill you. Naturally as we were shown how to get in without getting our hands wet (so we could handle anything electronic, like cameras or phones, I promptly splashed and got some of the water on my mouth (not in). Good Lord that stuff is salty.
Positive that I wasn't going to die, I laid back and chilled on the Dead Sea, floating like a discarded shoe. It was amazing but it does feel like you have been swimming in oil afterwards.

So close to walking on water.

After about 10 - 15 minutes in the water, we got to mud up. We slathered ourselves in therapeutic mud, from head-to-toe, doing our best 1930s Bugs Bunny impression and 20-minutes later we washed off the mud and jumped into the sulphur pool. Which was hot, but felt great.

Yep...can see no reason why this was banned

Unfortunately, our tour ended and we headed back to Tel-Aviv. We (two of us and our new Aussie friend) explored the city a bit more before having Subway for dinner and then going our separate ways. We went into our hostel/sauna and slept as best we could in a madhouse.


Day 9 - The setting sun on a new friendship

It kind of sucks that this is our last day in Israel. On one hand, we're moving on to explore new countries, but on the other, we made a good friend and the country is amazing. We awoke early and checked out. Walked a few blocks to our new hotel and waited an hour before being told that it doesn't open until 1pm. But we were able to store our bags inside and meet up with our friend.
Being Saturday and therefore the Sabbath, there wasn't much open but we went for a nice walk on a pretty hot day along places we hadn't explored searching for the Botanical Gardens...which we didn't find.
However we bought some rolls and cheese and some meat I suspect was Turkey and made our own picnic-style lunch at a nearby park in the shade. The tight-ass lunch hit us just where we wanted it and afterwards we headed back to the hotel seeing as it was nearly time to check-in. We waited and watched as the only entrance into the lobby of the hotel was being worked on because there was something wrong with the lock.

Finally we were able to check in and found the rooms good enough, the bed comfortable and it has a fridge and an air-conditioner. All I need.
We got changed and headed to the beach where we relaxed for a bit, did a bit of swimming and headed back for a quick nap (not before going to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner).
I woke up to find myself impersonating a tomato. Our friend arrived not long after and we sat on the balcony to have a tight-ass dinner of another roll with some sort of turkey with cheese, tomato and lettuce. It was delicious.
We then went for a walk along the beach again and had an ice-cream and, sadly, said our goodbyes to friend as we watched the sun setting and back to the hotel to pack and head off to Jordan tomorrow.

A final thought on Israel. The history, the still established ruins, the old churches (ok, I mentioned churches once), it's all amazing. I'm not even religious but I thoroughly enjoyed our tours through the supposed sites of Jesus and family. Going into Palestine to see where he was supposedly born. It was all interesting, fun, and even in the sweltering heat, enjoyable. Our guides were amazingly informed and entertaining.
Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem are amazing cities and more than I expected. I honestly thought I wouldn't find much to enjoy about them, I even thought Jerusalem was just an ancient city with no inhabitants! but I was completely wrong. It helps we were able to explore it with a friend, it makes a difference and will always remember those memories.
The only downsides is it does look a little dirty and I am pretty sure it is the lung cancer capital of the world, nearly everyone smokes and they treat the streets like an astray. The other disconcerting part is the military members, training or full-time, carry their gigantic BGFs around like it's a handbag. I assume it's not loaded, but standing next to someone carrying a semi-automatic weapon on a tram is something new.

I am looking forward to Jordan, and hope people will go and see Israel.

I didn't take any photos today, so here's one of a camel from yesterday

Day 7 - Pretzels and a new friend.

Day 7 started off like every other morning, an early wake up. This time it was a delicious local pretzel for breakfast and then on the van to meet the tour group heading to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

We loaded our luggage on to the van and met the others and headed for Mount Zion where we got a lovely panoramic view of Jerusalem, including the golden Dome of the Rock, an Arabic shrine.

It's like Russia got lost on the way to Europe

We then headed into the City of David, the oldest, settled part of Jerusalem as well as a major archeological site for biblical Jerusalem. We arrived and immediately headed for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a church in the Christian quarters of the city (there are also Arabic and Armenian quarters in the city).

Ancient columns and, to the right, the market place.

This church is most famous for being the site where Jesus was crucified and where he was buried (before the church was actually built). The church itself is huge, with tall roofs and still maintaining some of the ancient architecture from earlier periods (the church has been destroyed a couple of times). We were able to see the site where Jesus was laid after being removed from the cross. It is a popular place for pilgrims to have a blessing on items, including one lady who thought her handbag was worthy of such an honour.

Danni had he rings and Star of Jerusalem necklace blessed (for the second time). I merely touched it…it felt smooth.

We were also able to see the site where he was buried, however they have built something over it and you can enter through one way to get a close up look or view it from the exit. We saw it from the exit, though not very well.

I should have put my wallet on there.

After the Church we walked through the hustle and bustle of a thriving marketplace, a surprise since I expected Jerusalem, especially an ancient site like the City of David to be a ruin. Venders trying to sell clothing, candy, juices and other such things accosted us and the place had the smell of a market, various foods wafting together in the narrow lanes and reminded me of the souks in Dubai. We managed to lose one airhead repeatedly who decided this tour was more for shoe shopping than seeing an ancient site.

We arrived at the Western Wall\Wailing Wall where we were able to see many people placing their hands on the wall and making a wish. There were also Bar Mitzvahs happening as well.

And yes I made a placed my and on the wall and made a wish….hey, when in Rome.

What you can't see is the Wall's tears.

The airhead got lost a second time and we drove off without her, that was amusing, as she had to take a taxi to meet us at our lunch destination, a Kibbutz near the City of David. Lunch was nice, a buffet, but nothing to write home about.

After lunch we split from the others, who were to either head back to Tel-Aviv or the Holocaust Museum, or a couple of us went to Bethlehem, which is in Palestine.

Palestine is an interesting place. I didn’t know Bethlehem was located in the Palestinian territory but crossing into it was easy enough. The city is similar to Jerusalem, same architecture and the same hustle and bustle that Jurusalem has. I was honestly expecting something a whole lot different. Though I did have to laugh at their coffee shop called “Star & Bucks” and “The Subway”.

We were guided to the Church of Nativity, the site where Jesus was believed to have been born. The church is gorgeous, still holding some of it’s original structure (this is another church that had been destroyed many times over the past centuries). We were guided through and saw the manger where Jesus was born and some place the 3-wise men stood. We were also taken through the Church of Saint Catherine, nothing overly special there.

Bomb-free since 2012

We returned to Jerusalem and met the tour group at the Holocaust Museum. We were dropped off at our hotel and met with our new friend (a traitorous Australian now living in London) and took the tram back to the Holocaust Museum.

The Museum, like all Holocaust Museums I imagine, was an eye-opener. It’s really hard to imagine what it was like to be living in Nazi-Germany as a Jew, or what they went through in the concentration camps. What I could never understand is how the whole country backed Hitler and thought this was a good idea. But that’s history for you.

The Museum is very well built and you can follow it through the early stages through to Nazi invasions of Poland and finally the fall of the Reich. They have stories from survivors, relics found on the bodies of Jews killed in the camps, including letters, photos, etc. It was fascinating and unfortunately we are not allowed to take photos in the Museum.

 And not a Kippah in sight

Once we finished in the Museum we took the tram into the heart of Jerusalem and was surprised to see it a lively, vibrant town with a lot to do. We had McDonalds (don’t ask) and got an ice-cream as we walked through the town. I loved that they kept the original, ancient style buildings but are able to fit it out with modern stores. The reason being that in Jerusalem, it is the law that buildings have to be built with Jerusalem stone which keeps everything in the same style and gives it an old, but stunning look.

After seeing the town, we took a sardine-like crammed tram back to our hotel.

Exhausted after a long, but highly enjoyable day.

Day 6 - Adventures in Israel

Shalom!

One thing Tel Aviv has in common with Dubai is it gets pretty warm in the morning. But that is what you get in summer.

We woke early and had a small breakfast before being picked up for our first tour in Israel. We were dropped off at the meeting point and met the others who were going to join us on our tour, quite a random bunch of people from all over the world - USA, Mexico, Holland & Nigeria (probably got the money as a Nigerian Prince) and the tour guide, Haya.

Haya was awesome as a tour guide. She was knowledgeable about her country but was also quite funny in an older lady who-takes-no-shit-kind-of -way. We drove for about an hour through country Israel before reaching Nazareth.

Nazareth is the Arab capital of Israel but also the supposed birthplace of Jesus Christ (not Superstar, just the original).

Just above the entrance to the Annunciation Church

We visited the Basilica of the Annunciation, a beautiful old church where the Virgin Mary was told she would give birth to the Son of God. It is a big church that was financed by the Medici’s and built by Italian Giovanni Muzio We toured through and were able to see the cave where the angel visited Mary and also some remains of the original church.

Views suck but gas and electricity costs were next to nothing

The second floor has a magnificent lily dome and paintings donated by various countries (including Australia) lining the walls and a large painting behind the dias depicting Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St Peter.

After the Anunciation Church we went to St Joseph’s Church a little down the road where it is believed to be the carpentry workshop of Jesus’s father, Joseph and where he taught Jesus carpentry. Smaller than the Annunciation Church, the lower levels of the church have an ancient water pit/well, mosaics, caves that have survived since the 1^st century. Access to the crypt (the ancient areas) used to be accessible to the public, but no longer except on Christmas. However people still throw money and photos into the tunnels for some reason.

Joseph's workshop, like mine, hasn't been used in a long long time.

We departed Nazareth and headed to Tiberias, in the region of Galilee, where we viewed the Sea of Galilee and visited Capernaum, the home of Jesus Christ after he was banished from Nazareth. It was another place where the ancient times still stood. You could see the black stones of the houses, some walls still standing (though only a couple of feet high) and the white stone of a synagogue with it’s pillars and some walls still standing. There were even etchings in the stone still readable (if I could read the language). It was quite amazing.

We also saw the Octagonal Church that sits above the remains of St Peter’s house, which is still viewable today.

Like I said, amazing.

Lunch was along the Sea of Galilee, about a 2-minute drive from the Synagogue. We stopped at a restaurant with a great view of the water and had the amazing Capernaum fish for lunch. Delicious. The tour is worth it just to taste this fish.

After lunch we departed for Yardenit, the baptismal site on the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized. It was possible to pay $10 to get baptized if you wanted to, it was also tempting to do it just to get in the water. It looked so clean and refreshing and it was so hot today. However I didn’t and I still remain a heathen…except my hands. I put my hands in the water, so when I die, my hands will be waving at me from heaven.

The site was pretty cool but nothing memorable except that you have to pay 2 shekels to use the toilet. Needless to say I was outraged and didn’t pay out of spite.

The river where they dunked some poor kid

The tour finished there and we drove back to Tel Aviv and dropped off at our hotel. We put away our stuff and went a couple of blocks down the road to a German, restaurant called Bayern. We ate some damn good veal schnitzels and then returned home and packed for tomorrows tour.