Like a full year after this trip I’m writing up the rest of my trip post on Israel. Since the trip last year, I’ve watched one documentary on Israel – Israel: The Royal Tour (thanks Amazon) but mostly to see if I had seen the sites that they were showing. I saw most of ’em which is cool I guess.
Things lost up to day 6-
– earbuds (Jerusalem)
– Chapstick
– charging cable
– memories
I was walking along the path beside the (freaking!) Mediterranean and saw a big crowd of people dancing. No idea what it was but I was handed a flyer and gave ’em the coins in my pocket. 10 shekels. Dude did not look pleased when he saw that was all I was giving him. Whatever music they were playing and dancing to sure was catchy and it was fun to watch ’em dance. [I don’t remember what day this was to be honest.]
As this was my second time touring by myself, this was fun. The first time I went on a tour I was all nervous aorders ut not being picked up and called the tour company a few times – they showed up 40 minutes late. 4 days later on my next solo tour I’m like ‘well I guess if they don’t pick me up I’m not going on a tour.’ but eventually they showed up. Classic rookie mistakes.
Bein Harim tours are top notch. The guides give you little details with things you pass. As in, literally their job. Another tour guide we had was mediocre at best.
The above was not our tour guide. Shit would’ve been cool if he was though.
We drove by a bunch of places, Natanya, which, according to my notes in my phone notes says they have a bunch of eucalyptus tree forests out there. Some history is that they brought the trees in to help dry out the swamps and a result of that is it helps control the mosquito population. Bad ass. The only thing i know about eucalyptus trees is some cartoon I watched growing up where the koala bear ate eucalyptus leaves. No idea what TV show that was and I actually don’t want to know.
We stopped in Haifa to check out the awesome Baha’i gardens up there. They’re pretty nice but man, imagine mowing that with a push mower uphill. One mistake and bam, you’re having a bad day.
Also, by this time, I was getting tired of looking at cool things. Which isn’t mentioned in any of the tour reviews I’ve read. After awhile, you get tired of looking at old ass rocks and shit. I do, anyway. Maybe I’m not the target audience. It’s cool initially but by the time you hit your 30th cool-place-where-something-happened you just kind of are over it. “Oh nice *snaps picture to never look at again*” I’m the worst at tourism.
We eventually worked our way up to traveled all the way north to the Rosh Hanikra Grottoes
“all the way” being like a 2 hour drive. Bitch…we’re still stuck in DFW traffic with that much time. You’re driving across the country? Damn.
We got to the Lebanon border and that was cool. Not sure how far away we were from it between the gates though.
Assassin’s Creed shit
After the grottoes, we hopped on the bus and headed back down to have lunch in Acre / Akko.
Check it out. This shit right here is why I wasn’t opposed to visiting Israel. It’s a dorky reason but thinking about it, any reason to travel is a good reason, right? I ran around Acre in AssCreed and I was like “man that’d be cool to visit” and well, here we are. Flew all the way out here just so I could make the eagle noise in my head when looking at taller towers. HAHAHA I’m still making the eagle scream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HHszKElVdk
After not buying stuff from local vendors, we were able to get on with our tour of the fortress.
IThis was ’s crazy how big these places are. Walking through tunnels, seeing how high the rooms went, and how we were only in the middle of the room (even though it was super tall room) because you could look down a hole and see that the floor was like 18 feet below you. Must’ve been impressive to walk into there when it was fresh.
I don’t remember much other than walking and seeing a bunch of cool shit but by this point in the trip I was ready to go home. 5 days is about as much time as I can spend before I want to go home and get back to my routine. Maybe I need a 2-3 week trip to build a bridge and get over that shit. Sometimes I just want to eat my mi mama (instant noodles) with an egg and not eat out all the time. Which is somewhat of a privileged view to have now that I think about it.
Just like minimalism (that’s another thread).
If I recall correctly, I went home and napped my ass off. Woke up at 19:00 and walked a kilometer to Falafel Hakosem which was absolutely delicious (thanks Jaala) and well worth the 20-30 minute wait in line. What was cool was they’d send someone out with some falafel balls as samples and holy shit, 1) it was hot and b) it was perfect. Best falafel ever.
Then I went back to the hotel, slept, woke up and went home. Best trip ever.
Until the next trip.
Links:
Eucalyptus Tree History – http://www.artsncraftsisrael.com/Eucalyptus-Tree-Israel/