Hotel Nes Tziona Tel Aviv

3 days to go...

I'm almost ready... at least supposed to be... but see for yourself :)

Now it's possible to start checking the weather, and so far its ok:
In Barcelona will ...

... month and I'd walk around like a proud rooster showing off my arms.
I get some frozen yogurt and while we sit and I eat, some old religious dude walks up to me and asks me out. Efrat thinks I should take it as a compliment and I say something like, "well clearly YOU'RE taken, if he asked you out, I'd go home crying!" We laugh, just like we always do.
Time to go, I tell her that she doesn't need to wait until my bus comes, I don't want to hold ...

... then we joined in and marched along with everybody else. At one point, one of the drag queens making a speech at the park had thanked all the foreign tourists who came for Pride. We were included! We were counted! And maybe we made a difference!

(Just a quick note on the beach end of things: if you like loud house music, then you would have enjoyed the beach party. For us, it was a little overwhelming. But the party at the beach went on for hours and, in my mind, the music never varied.)

... it certainly is a cosmopolitan, bustling Mediterranean cultural metropolis that goes strong all day and all night.

This was not the last Eytan Fox moment of the day, either. After a needed rest at the hostel, we decided to have dinner on Florentin St, home to Eytan Fox's late-'90s TV series "Florentin" (or "Florentene"), which we both love (and which stars Ayelet Zurer, now of "Angels & Demons" fame). Bugsy is supposed to have Tel Aviv's best ...

After a rather intense week(s), Nicole and I headed out by ourselves (we couldn't take the group for another minute) to the DEAD SEA! One of my friends had been over a previous break and told us the best place to go ... Ein Gedi Spa ... she was right! It was so awesome!

The view on the way was absolutely insane. The Dead Sea is located along the Negev desert, and down at the sea, there are these enormous cliffs.





Tel Aviv, Israel beccaboyer

... there was also a lesson on the logistics of army enlistment for those potentially interested, another of which we had received earlier at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. I had expected that this program might have some underlying themes of trying to convince us to do Aliyah, which I completely understand. The commanders do not push it, but they definitely make themselves open to questions. Many of the Argentinians, in particular, seem to be considering a move to Israel. All of us, though ...

... dresses to what you would see in the US. Instead of the bride and groom getting a limo, they would use their own cars and decorate it with a large bow going over the passenger side of the car. We walked around the old city of Jaffa and then headed to the outdoor flea market. Ahuvah has this obsession with second hand refurbished furniture. It was great though. We just made it back home and its 8:45pm. Ahuvah is cleaning out her bags and ...

... in Belgium. She and her husband (a diamond dealer) have the most incredible apartment, it's on the 30th floor of an apartment building housing such dignitaries as Shimon Peres and the head of the Russian mafia. There's a massive balcony that goes almost 360 degrees around for unbelievable views of all Tel Aviv, and other luxuries such as speakers in the bathrooms connected to the bedroom TV's, so I could listen to The Weakest Link while taking a ****.

I went ...

... Take care all you whale-sharks, reef sharks, rays, whales, dolphins, turtles, Nemos, octopuses, zebras, giraffes, deer, bearcats, keas, wekas, penguins, albatrosses, glowworms, kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, emus, crocodiles, echidnas, cassowaries (though you don't exist), parrots, dingos, Tasmanian devils, wombats, flying foxes, possums, pandas and elephants. So long exotic fruits, thirst-quenching shakes and peculiar ...

... minutes, we were at the checkpoint--thick, high walls of concrete topped by razor wire. We entered a building and went through a passport check. An Israeli soldier advised us not to take pictures in "the terminal". We passed through and out to the other side. There was a line of about 100 people waiting to get into Jerusalem in the terminal and spilling outside in a fenced-in walkway. Bryan brilliantly negotiated a 20 NIS taxi ride to/from the terminal to Bethlehem ...