Our Israel Experience

-written by Cynthia

October 24th - November 8th, 2006 we took a vacation to Israel...just the two of us. I organized everything on-line to keep it affordable. We flew with Alitalia (not my highest recommendation for airlines) since they were the only airline able to fly us into Tel Aviv from Stuttgart during daylight hours & for a very cheap price. We made it there safe & sound, took a shared taxi to the New Gate of the Old City in Jerusalem. It was a challenge making our way with the luggage on the old stoned streets to our hotel, but we made it. The first & only major shock of the trip was our hotel. The hotel website & all online recommendations seemed that the hotel would be fine & the price was right, so I booked it. Our room turned out to not be available due to extra Muslims in town for the holiday. We were given a little shoebox of a room with no window and a moldy bathroom. We were exhausted, so decided not to complain since the owner was so friendly & promised us the best room in the house the next day. After a sleepless night due to the Muslims partying, we headed out the next day to enjoy the Old City. The weather was wonderful & the streets were practically empty since the shops were still closed. We walked and walked and walked taking everything in. After lunch, we went back to the hotel to move into our new room, but the current manager was not informed & could not give us a new room. Well, that for sure did not sit well with us, but we did not argue, but instead went out in search of another hotel. In my previous online searches, I had several choices in mind, though their prices were higher. Through the Christian Quarter we marched, certain someone would have room for us. One door after another...there was no room. Started understanding how Mary & Joseph felt as the sun started setting and the narrow streets darkened. We wound around the Old City to the Armenian Quarter when I remembered the website of a German owned hotel on St.Marks, but that they had been booked out. What did we have to loose, so we rang the bell & were buzzed inside. The young man behind the desk was very sorry for our Jerusalem experience and promised us he'd give us a nice room & the hotel was very safe & clean. Now all we had to do was get reimbursed from the other hotel. Back across the Old City we went full of hopes & prayers that we would get our money back & be able to drag our luggage to the German hotel. Once inside, we went straight to our rooms, packed our bags and went to the front desk & nicely explained that we wanted to check out & get our money back. Needless to say, they were not pleased & so the discussions began & the blood pressures rose. Gerhard let me deal with manager since I could handle the quick English responses. The manager called the owner on the phone & argued with him in Arabic so that we could not understand. That began the discussion between me & Gerhard in German so that we could make our plans without being understood by the others. The manager put me on the phone with the owner & I argued my way through till it was confirmed that we would get our money back except for the first two days. What a relief! We boogied it out of there as quick as possible, money stashed away & ran to the German hotel. It was such a huge difference and so very wonderful, that we knew our time in the Old City would be a great experience! And so it was. We covered miles of ground each day, exploring as much as we could. There have been many changes since I was there in 2000, but so much is still the same. There is constant growth & discovery, so we will certainly be going back. We had an excellent map, so in no time, we were so familiar with the streets, it almost felt like home. Towards the end of our Jerusalem week, we ran into a couple of ladies (mother & daughter) from Texas who had just arrived in Jerusalem - also traveling alone. We gave them some tips & we each went our separate ways. We had such a burden that they needed us, that we turned around and tried to find them. We found them at a little café to give them one of our maps in hopes they would not get lost. We then offered to guide them to our Internet café & after that, we once again parted ways and once again, that burden feeling washed over us. Again, we turned and tried to follow them...not too difficult since they were on the path we had advised them to follow. We decided to spend the next couple of days together & they even switched hotels from outside the Old City to come stay in our hotel. They were at the end of their Israel trip & we were just in the middle, but we were all so exhausted & overwhelmed to be in such an amazing place. It was a blessed time.

Since this is getting long, I'll just sum up the rest...for our second week, we rented a car & drove up the coast & then over to Tiberias to the same hotel I stayed in 2000, Casa Nova for 4 days. We traveled all over Galilee with the highlights being the Jesus Boat, the ruins of Megiddo & Zippori and the town of Safed (the city on the highest hill letting their light shine in the NT). For our last three days, we drove South along the Jordan river to the Dead See where we stayed at the En Gedi Youth Hostel. The hostel was cheap, but clean and the food was tasty & abundant, which we were pleasantly surprised. The highlights were Qumran, Massada (where excavations in the past 6 years have uncovered much!), the Mt. Sodom and surprisingly enough, a McDonald's in the Spa resort area. The Dead Sea has receded so much, I was constantly in shock. Where we could easily reach the water in 2000, there was no trace of water without walking a good distance. Made me wonder if the Dead Sea originated from the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah, what would be the result of this large sea, where evidence of it's once extremely large size is clear in the surrounding landscape, dries up as the world becomes more and more like & worse than the Sodom & Gomorrah of old.

We made it back home on Nov. 8th after being up all night in the airport at Tel Aviv. We didn't want to fork over the big bucks to stay at a hotel in town just till our 2:30am flight check-in, but we were in one of the safest airports of the world & found a simi-quiet place to rest.

Our trip was fantastic & even the crazy first hotel was an experience that couldn't damper our excitement. We met many friendly people and had a blast. We were even invited to tea by one of the Armenian Mayors in the Old City where he filled us in on much of his life in the Old City. There is much too much to share, but this is a good overview I think. I've still got a couple hundred photos to edit before I can put together a scrapbook of our memories. A few of the photos are on my gallery...see link on sidebar.

If you ever need free tour guides to Israel, you know where to find us!

Here we are very HIGH up the cliffs at EnGedi over looking the Dead Sea, which happened to be the most dangerous thing we have ever done, the path was more for mountain goats than humans!
Here we are at Megiddo