This has turned out to be the lamest blog ever. . .more like a picture gallery. . .

The view from a moshav called Ilaniya, in the lower Galil between Haifa and Tiberius. The photo hardly does it justice. My favorite thing about this area is definitely the olive groves. Olive trees are really beautiful and there were fields of them all on the drive to the moshav.

 So, the above picture is my last one from my time in the north. I had a lovely time staying overnight at a guest-house at the above moshav after a Shabbat dinner with the whole Shishkoff clan which was a whole lot of fun. The only one missing was Avishalom because he was still in Canada. I was the only non-family member there, but I felt completely at home. That Sunday morning, I said my goodbyes and took the train to Tel Aviv where I met the Santoros. I've been in the Jerusalem area for over a week now and I love it too. I miss the people I met up in the Kraiyot, but it's beautiful here and my walk through the Old City on Tuesday made me fall in the love with Jerusalem.

This is Mesillat Tzion, a moshav outside of Jerusalem started by Jews from Chochin, India. Eddie and Jackie live here, so this is where I've been staying for the past week and a half. It's a very beautiful place in the middle of the Eshtol forest, near Bet Shemesh.

This is the view you see immediately when you walk through Jaffa Gate into the Old City. The beautiful colors and jewelry are overwhelming, but so are the vendors who bother you to buy their stuff- I love the old city, but not so much that part of it. At least most of them aren't selling cheap stuff made in China. . .as far as I know.

This guy was in the Jewish quarter (duh). Beautiful beautiful tallitot, but I didn't bother even looking at prices because I didn't want to cry.

This is part of the Cardo, in the Jewish quarter. These are some of the remains of the main Roman throughfare built after they destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE.

View of the Kotel from a rooftop in the Jewish quarter. It was shorter than I imagined it, but still awe-inspiring. Praying at the Kotel was probably one of the most moving parts of my trip. I went up an waited forever trying to get a spot at the wall. Well, maybe some people push through, but I didn't, especially since I'm not Jewish it felt weird pushing in front of a Jew who wanted to pray at the wall. Anyway, I finally got to touch the wall and say some simple prayers and cried a lot. I don't know what it's like on the mens' side, but the orthodox women on both sides of me had drenched their prayer books by the time they were done.

Notice the completely disproportionately divided sides. The mechitzah recently became higher, but I think it's always been divided like this. Btw, for anyone who thinks this is part of the original temple, this is actually part of the retaining wall. The temple was where the dome of the rock is now. It is the only remaining part of the temple complex though, which is why it has inspired the reverence of Jewish people for 2,000 years.

The classic view of the Golden Gate from the Mount of Olives. We didn't walk all the way up because it's a sketchy area and it was going to get dark soon, but it was a gorgeous view. The Dome of course stands out over everything, which was their purpose in building it, and the Muslim cemetery in front of the Golden Gate is an unsuccessful attempt at stopping the Messiah from returning through the gate. In the foreground is a Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives in which it is a great honor to be buried.

Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem was definitely the most beautiful structurally.

 The next day, Wednesday, after walking around Jerusalem for six hours, I took a trip to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea with some nice Germans that Eddie and Jackie know, where we did a five-ish hour hike. It was absolutely gorgeous, but I can't imagine even entertaining the idea of going there in the summer. I was sweating profusely and getting sunburned in the middle of winter, so the summer must be brutal. Anyway, this wadi in the middle of the desert was where David went to hide from King Saul.

These ibex are all over the area. In fact, the place is named after them. Gedi means goat-kid in Hebrew. So, Goat-kid Spring, is quite an oasis in the desert. I'm not a desert person, but it was beautiful.

The caves in the rocks made me want to learn how to rock climb so that I could go exploring. As I told the people I was with at the time, if I were a Bedouin who lived in the Qumran area, I totally would have found those scrolls. The caves are so intriguing. And I guess David hid in one of them too. . .

One of the numerous waterfalls in the wadi.

The view across to Jordan was just spectacular. Usually it's much foggier, but we could see almost completely clean across. When we got really high up, the views were phenomenal.

I love this picture because of the stark color contrasts and the lone tree. It was lovely to hike in the winter, but I couldn't live here.

Again, the color contrasts are striking. I believe these palm trees were all planted by workers on the nearby kibbutz. Either way, they were planted by Israelis at some point. The photo is taken from the vantage point of the kibbutz. It gives a good far-off view of the hike we did. We didn't hike the high peak in the right top, but I believe we were on the next level down from there or one below that. Whatever it was, it was high up. We cut down the slope to where you see the bend in the road right above the tree tops and then crossed a rather ugly gully to get to the kibbutz, which contained a botanical garden, but unlike one I've ever seen before. All those cacti- I guess it was a desert botanical garden. . .

On the walk up to the kibbutz there was a random branch on the road. The only one for miles around. Most branches are on trees or else they're not green.

Then we walked down to the Dead Sea so that I could at least say that I've touched the water.

I really don't understand how the water can retain that much salt but it is majorly majorly salty. . .and oily. I took off my shoes and rolled up my pants to wade in. When I got out, after the water finally evaporated, there was this oil left that I had to go up an wash off. One day I'll swim in it. . .but I prefer fresh water.

This is the Eshtol forest that I'm living in the middle of at the moment. When we took a drive up the mountain to get this view, I felt the most at home then I had for the whole trip. I think you can tell why. . .

I've been being spoiled by Eddie's amazing cooking. His bread is especially tasty.

 This past Sunday and Monday, I took a trip into Tel Aviv-Yafo to visit Stacey and to see the city. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I still like Jerusalem better, but Tel Aviv has it's own appeal and is beautiful in it's own way. We started out in Yafo, which I absolutely loved. It's definitely a close second to Jerusalem in my estimation. It has a very antique air, even outside the old city. And I liked the narrow streets and mixture of Arab and Israeli culture.

Yafo was a very significant port city in it's heyday. This pic is still outside the old city walls.

View of Tel Aviv from Yafo coast.

The fisherman and his cat

I really loved old Yafo, primarily for all it's winding stone passageways.

On our way back north, we passed by this amazing baklava shop. This Arab guy makes all the baklava you see here and more and he lays it out so beautifully. He let us go behind the counter to take other pictures and after I bought a gift platter for the Santoros, he gave us each a 6 shekel piece of baklava for free. It was by far the best shop in Yafo.

I forget if this was the Yemenite Quarter of Tel-Aviv or not, but if not, it was around that area. Even though most of the buildings in this are looked like this, it was very cute.

Outskirts of the Carmel Shuk (market) in Tel-Aviv.

We went to visit Evan at his work place in Gilgal Hotel, the only Christian hotel in Tel-Aviv. This was on the 6th floor, which had a lovely view of the beach except it was raining hard and instead I decided to have some fun taking an interesting shot.

This was our late lunch, which we had totally earned after 6 hours of walking. I was hurting afterward, but it was delicious.

I met up with my former Hebrew teacher, Noa, that evening and we went out to eat a late dinner on Shenkein St., a very popular street in downtown Tel-Aviv. Thus, I got to take part in the most common Tel-Aviv night-life scenario-eating at a restaurant or cafe, sitting almost in the sidewalk. I found the menu quite entertaining, and you'll see why if you look closely. I ordered the House Salad which was scrumptious and now I'm hooked on fried chalomi cheese.

After sleeping over in Stacey's flat, I took a walk up to Tel-Aviv University to see the Diaspora Museum. It took way longer than I expected, but I got to see more of Tel-Aviv, so it certainly wasn't boring. This is the horrendously dirty Yarkon River which is so polluted that I guess people who have fallen into it (while kayaking) have gotten really sick. The stench is just awful, so I got out of there quickly.

Tel-Aviv sky-scrapers from the Yarkon Park, which wasn't the prettiest of any park I've ever seen, but it certainly was a lot greener than everything else there, so I guess native Tel-Avivers get eye-relief from it.

An Israeli honeybee along on route to the University.

It was a very interesting and informative and well-laid out museum. It's modern flare, relying heavily on recreations of different aspects of Jewish life across time periods and geographic areas with an emphasis on the latter. Instead of ancient artifacts, there were miniature models of synagogues in many cities across the world, and sculptures like the one above, depicting scenes in a typical Jewish community. This is a musician from the wedding scene.

Stacey and I. We had a ton of fun together in Tel-Aviv, including fun memories like being asked by a random guy in a car if we were Scandinavian. . .