Mercure B and P Tel-Aviv Tel Aviv

... to strike gold when it comes to dining with them two, yet another thing to look forward to when we meet again in Auckland.<br><br>Bloated on hummus, we waddled back to our bikes and pushed off veeery slowly back north, again along the water. The promenade continues a couple of miles along the beach and then becomes a really cool boardwalk. The wood bows gently up in spots, mimicking the waves on your left that are illuminated in green floodlights. The boardwalk ...

... br>The inland itinerary starts to become more clear. I used Renfe to purchase the tickets back to Barcelona. The train is supposed to take me from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid on September 3rt afternoon ...

... of her friends in Tel Aviv. We wanted to go out and have a beer at a bar but the places we went were pretty quiet. Saturday night is a school night here since Sunday is a regular work day. The buses stopped running and we needed to take a cab home.<br>On the way there was a car with a family of Israeli-Arabs blasting some music. I look at the kid in the back dancing with passion and I smile. The cab driver, a young man probably in his early 30's ...

... speaking. <br>He talks about the importance of not taking sides, of how both Israelis and Palestinians feel victimised and this is where the problem lies. He speaks of how everything set against the Palestinians - from roadblocks to the wall - are done to elicit a reaction, to incite anger so that they will, on one level, throw stones. On another level, he says that the war on Gaza was not to weaken Hamas but to strengthen them. The only way to cope, he explains, is not to react to how ...

... of the caregivers, the films you can view, and the platforms above the reef which allow you to observe the dolphins closeup. It was a beautiful experience and we felt moved by it. <br><br>We had yet another noteworthy experience I wanted to recount to you, although I might hear some snickering as I describe it. We signed up for a relaxation session which began at 12:30 a.m. in a specially-designed seaside facility in an insanely romantic setting. Candles flickered by the ...

... I got a 5! (Part of the issue is that if you're a single woman traveling by yourself, and ESPECIALLY if you have been to the West Bank, you are very suspicious. I guess a while back some women were convinced they were in love with these Arab guys, and they used them to carry bombs for them - unknowingly becoming suicide bombers)<br><br>Then, they 3-D scan all of your bags. You go over to a counter where they look at the images ...

Monday morning our plan was to spend the day in the Old City. Micha found a place to park off on a back side street. Since we would not be able to move the van, we walked everywhere from 8am to 5pm. We started outside the city walls in the City of David, just on the southern end of the city on Mount Zion. There we found King David's Tomb. Of course, it's a holy place for the Jews, so Michael and Micha had to put on ...

... I was looking for, so I went into an area that was getting a lot of tourist traffic and found an entrance to an underground cavern that turned out to be the crypt of the Virgin Mary. I went down and noticed the place to be decorated with dozens of gaudy, brass and silver chandeliers taking up as much ceiling space as possible on the long flight of stairs down to the main chamber.  At the bottom was a tiny chapel with the usual effigies and pictures of Mary and Jesus while ...

... is what you get. Shira and Chaim live in the same place as the last time I was here. Shira and Chaim are ultra orthodox and live in a small community that have the same value and beliefs. Ahuvah's parents are renting an apartment just downstairs from Shira. I think the family went to NJ to observe passover. But its really nice here. If you were shorts, a short sleeve shirt, or show your collar bone you will get staired down here. haha. The people ...

... 2000, just after the Jubilee celebrations), the economy has been spiraling down. There are fewer tourists. Bethlehem being totally under the control of the Palestinian Authority, Israeli tour companies do not organize any visits to the city. In fact, Israeli citizens are not even allowed to go to the Palestinian Territories at all, and, of course, Palestinians who do not hold the right papers / work perrmits, etc, cannot go into Israel. The Palestinians in good standing, with ...