Hotel Mercure Suites Bat Yam

500 meters and dropping. The car darts along with the curvy road through mountain passes. We stop. There's a camel blocking the road. 300 meters. My ears feel like I'm going scuba diving, I have to clear them every so often to stop the pressure build up. 0 Meters. We're at sea level, oxygen levels like what I'm used to back in Miami, like drinking the air. -400 meters. Yam Hamelach, the Sea of Salt, the Dead Sea. The Lowest place on the earth's surface. I've ...

It's 4 am. I've been traveling for eight hours, which doesn't feel like a very long time to be flying any more with all the moving about I've been doing. My plane touches down in Ha'eretz Yisrael, the Promised Land, or, like the title of this entry explains, the land of milk and honey and gorgeous women. My heart is pounding fast, and the adrenaline is cutting through the tiredness and the slight haziness that unlimited free glasses of wine on ...

... of David Ben Gurion Airport not-so-gently, it begun to sink in that I would not be visiting this country, but living there for two and a half months. I can think of no other foreign land where the customs, religious traditions and language reminds me of growing up and celebrating holidays with my family. Oh, and it helped that the woman I fell in love with this summer in Chicago was already living in Israel and would remain there until early ...

... his commentary, simply seeing the sights and making sure that we didn’t get lost or separated from the group – No. 7 - in the melees at the various sites we visited, so crowded were they. The bus trip from Ashdod to Jerusalem was a bit of a revelation for me since I had no idea of just how hilly the area is. We passed several areas which seemed affluent and which he said were areas where the Arab people lived.

... were actually available there: she knew there was a fridge, kettle, and no stove, but had no idea where the microwave she thought was there last time she'd been.

Things became a little more clear after I dropped off my bags in her room and went back to her house, where she really lives. Proper plush. Apparently the kibbutz built the residences for young people who want to move out of their parent ...

... castle walls.

Unfortunately we only had limited time in the area but we managed a half day trip down to Bethlehem to visit the Church of Nativity and Milk Grotto. It was a pretty incredible feeling seeing the spot where Jesus was born. Of course, T also had a chance to add to her Xmas tree decorations :-)

It’s such a shame that very few tourists take the opportunity to cross into the West Bank and visit Bethlehem and other ...

... cinema I used to love going to when I was here in '86-'87. Back then, it was the only cinema that didn't have commercials before the movies (long before it became common in the U.S., so seeing ads elsewhere was a surprise to me) and that had assigned seating. Moreover, situated where it is, it has a tremendous view of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Hinnom Valley from its plaza and downstairs restaurant where we ...

... to visit three other holy sites today. I went to David's tomb. This is an important site for Jewish people where King David is said to be buried. I covered my head (I'm not sure what to make of the fact that one is required to cover the head in Jewish holy sites and uncover it in Christian holy sites) and went to the men's prayer area simply to pray silently for several minutes. There I imagined David building this city to honor God and deeply longing to build a ...

... reply, but two times I got a "yeah!" and once a polite smile. Mustn't be a universal greeting afterall. Wie schade. It's been great though, and a little surreal to think that the ground I've been walking on is the very ground that so many people I have heard about all my life have walked on and I'm going to places I have heard about my whole life. Even just seeing a street sign that says "Galilee" or "Nazareth" is quite surreal.

... myself to poultry and the occasional rib in the summer. Lamb is something I have trouble with, not so much because of the smell or the strong taste (although if it is mutton, I cannot have any at all!) as much as because when I was growing up in the West Indies, I had a pet goat. When we left to go and live in France, I could not take the pet goat with me and when I asked my father what would become of it, who would feed her, his answer was that it would make a family a ...