And When You're Dead...You're Dead ... 12/28-12/29

Now it has come time to blog about my most recent two days. Not that I really mind. I enjoy writing and I’m going to enjoy having all these later so it really is a good thing. On top of that, these posts keep all of you informed and, hopefully, at least mildly entertained.

My brain is kind of fried. For some reason I’m not sleeping nearly as well over here as I usually do. Even though I’m getting more sleep than normal, I’m feeling really tired. It’s probably jet lag still. Oh well… all of that to say I know my writing is getting disjointed but I’m just too tired to and distracted to deal with it.

Alright, here we go. Yesterday morning, Thursday morning, we got up early and drove down to the Dead Sea. We first tried to get into another National Park but I guess I drive too fast because we were there about forty-five minutes early. So, we drove on down the lake shore a little ways to a park area where we could actually get down to the shore. While Laura and Beth were talking about dipping their toes in, I had bigger plans. Paying a shekel to get into the bathroom, I changed into my shorts before heading down to the beach.

Yup, I went swimming in the Dead Sea. Well, I don’t know that you can really call it swimming. They say that you float and they aren’t wrong. It was even hard to stand back up after having been flat. It was hilarious, but it was fun. It was so much fun.

The problem is that the Dead Sea is also oily for some reason and for the rest of the day I felt it. That’s a weird feeling, and not exactly comfortable. Let’s just say that the shower felt really good last night.

After our adventure in the Dead Sea we went and looked at some wildlife at En Gedi and then continued on down to Masada. Now let me explain Masada. Masada is the ruins of a fortress at the top of a 1200 foot cliff. You can pay sixty shekels and take a cable car or you can go up for free via the snake path. It’s two kilometers worth of either very steep trail or steps. The sign said there were over seven hundred steps on the way up. Yes, that’s the route I took. It took me a lot longer than I planned, but I made it up. It was even a bit fun.

Once I caught my breath, we looked around up on top. That place is amazing. You could spend an entire day there and not see everything. We only spent right about an hour up there, but we still got to see quite a bit.

Tel Arad was the next stop. On the way we passed by where Sodom would have been. We spent just about ten minutes at Tel Arad because we wanted to hurry up and get to Tel Beer Sheva before it closed.

Beer Sheva was pretty cool. I really enjoy looking around the different Tels. All the layers of history really fascinate me.

And that brings us to today, Friday. We started off the day driving almost all the way up to Tel Aviv and trying to find Tel Aphek. Yes, emphasis on the word “trying.” In trying to find it we accidentally wound up at a Baptist Village, a National Park around some springs, several Tel Garbage locations, and two or three gas stations. It was quite the adventure. We did however eventually find it and it was indeed very, very worthwhile.

There was actually green grass. I’m not kidding! Some of the pictures I took of they Byzantine ruins look like they could actually be somewhere in Ireland. It was really funny.

From there we drove up to Jaffa. Well, not directly up. To get there we had to drive through Tel Aviv and that’s the one city in Israel that Dr. Fisher doesn’t really know that well. We spent about an hour trying to get to Jaffa before we actually got there.

We spent some time wandering Jaffa, ate lunch, looked through a museum, wandered around the artists district, and just enjoyed Jaffa at a leisurely pace. When we were finished, or as close as we were going to get, we spent about another hour navigating our way back out of Tel Aviv and onto the main highway back down to Jerusalem.

We arrived back in Jerusalem about two o’clock. Having time, we settled accounts and then went down to the old city and wandered there until about 6:30. That was pretty fun. With it being the eve of the Sabbath all of the Jewish shops were closed so we were in the Arab section for shopping and money changing. It was packed. The best way I can describe it is that it was like a thick trail of ants running around a labyrinth. Except the ants were people; lots and lots of people. Yeah, it was pretty hectic.

But it was fun, after a fashion. I bought a couple of gifts and only spent a couple bucks, so that was cool.

And…that’s it for this post. I’m posting this at an Internet Café here in the Old City so that’s why there are no pictures. I’ll try to add some later. They should be up either Sunday or Monday. So yeah, check back!