Ami Hotel Tel Aviv

<br><br><br><!-- ^ Position is not set to relative / absolute here because of Mozilla --><br><br>I had a small talk to a neightbour passenger in the flight and it proved that my *knowledge* of Spanish will be of no use not only in Barcelona (here they speak Catalan), but ...

... my way back when it happened. I actually heard the bomb, I walked there, I saw things that I hope to never ever see again. I felt a rage that I didn't know existed inside me.<br>There's a little memorial here, written only in Hebrew. It has the names of those who perished, 13 names. <br>Although I've driven passed it many times, I never went inside. I decided I will meet up with Efrat there. She said to me that when she told her husband that we were ...

... of parties and events&#8212;both an official schedule of events and spontaneous parties organized online.<br><br>So still now knowing whether we were sitting on the sidelines and watching the parade or if it was more like a political march, we went to The Happening in the park. At first, it wasn&#8217;t too crowded, but there were booths from the various social services organizations and some early sightings of drag queens. The park quickly filled with people though. Within an hour ...

... rules: very confusing for the uninitiated. Meat and dairy cannot mix at restaurants that keep kosher (which is most of them). Fish and eggs are considered neither meat nor dairy. Kevin puts it best in his blog. But there are enough restaurants that don't keep kosher that you can find the occasional pork chop or bacon even, though I don't recall encountering a cheeseburger yet, not that I've looked for one.<br>Almost every Jewish ...

... drill later back at the base amongst only us boys, and in this session, it seemed that pride took over. Everybody was incredibly motivated, and I had a certain feeling of being a part of something special. It truly felt as if we were real soldiers preparing for a battle the following day. We also simulated medic recoveries of injured soldiers in the field using a strecher, as well as simply picking up and carrying our comrade to safety. <br><br><br><br>As part of the whole Aliyah theme ...

... building and gardens on a hill. It was stunning. <br><br><br>Next we went to Akko (or you sometimes see it as "Acre" on American-made maps). It's a very old city, and in fact is mentioned in the book of Judges as one of the cities from which the Israelites did not drive out the Canaanites. They've done a lot of archealogical digs there and have uncovered a lot of ...

... went into few cllubs round there that wernt to bad. It was pretty nice gettin into them, the bouncers and the women that hold the guestlist clipboard things let us in straight away to most places due to the fact we were both whiteys and clearly foriegners. Usually a non queing concept ****** me off but when my aryan looks make us the pick of the crop i cant winge to much, it was like what bouncers do in russia issuing whats called face control, if your abit ugly or dont have ...

Yad Vashem<br><br>I did a 3-hour guided tour of the museum this morning. Even though I'd spent a few days here on my Poland Heritage Tour program, we hadn't really got the chance to look around the new museum. I found it really interesting, particularly now that I've visited several of the camps. Because the content is so emotive, having a guide really added to the visit. The new museum is shaped like a triangular prism, with the lack of natural light and the sloping ...

... a ritual, to be part of worship. Next door was a more modern church, where midnight mass is broadcast across the world on Christmas Eve. We walked around the grounds a bit and stopped for a coffee at the Casa Nova Palace hotel. We spent some time in a gift shop--picking up some olive wood ornaments in a 14 point star shape. On the way back, our driver--who had waited for us--stopped to show us some of the graffiti along the wall and the nicer hotels in Bethlehem. He ...

... grove back onto the road. We didn't want to turn our backs on the soldiers to walk up the hill, because we heard about activists that have gotten shot at close range (and had rubber bullets lodged in their skulls) as they were retreating, but Aunt Jen and I needed to get this old woman up the hill and out of the range of fire. Aunt Jen could barely open her eyes herself but somehow we all managed to get up the hill. We heard later that the ...