If you don't like travel blogs, you might want to leave right now. Also, this post might get long - if that's not your thing, you should check out one of my more svelte posts, maybe this one.
My family and I spent spring break in Israel. It was a big trip for us. I haven't been overseas since I was eight. Turns out that trip was part of a grand plan for my dad to find a house because my parents were getting divorced. Such fun! Sometimes when I write stuff like that, I think I should delete it before my mom sees it. She's one of my many readers, you know. But then I think, "fuck it, this is my blog and I'll write whatever I want." Hi mom!
Israel is far from Oregon. We left our house at about 11am, flew first to San Francisco, then hopped on a quick 14 hour flight to Tel Aviv. 14 hours is a long time to be on a plane. For a few weeks leading up to the trip, I was worried. "Wear compression socks!" I did. "Upgrade to first class!" I didn't. We sat in coach with the riff raff. The long flight left at about 9:30 pm and flew east, so we raced through the time zones and arrived at about 9:30 pm the next day. Soon after we took off, they served us dinner - chicken or pasta? I had the chicken. It wasn't good. Soon before we landed, they served us dinner - chicken or pasta? I had the pasta. It wasn't good.
During my weeks of growing concern about the long flight, I tried to buy my way out of 14 hours of misery. I already told you about the compression socks. I wasn't sure why they were a good idea, but I got them anyway. Turns out they help prevent blood clots. I also got a neck pillow, noise cancelling headphones, a silk sleep mask, melatonin, Xanax, and lots of snacks. I took some Alleve, a pre-emptive strike against the aches and pains of my aging body. I downloaded two seasons of Better Call Saul onto my iPad.
In the end, I just sat there in my compression socks and watched a mediocre movie on the screen mounted on the seat in front of me. Then I put on my neck pillow and dozed/didn't-doze for a few hours. I got up, sat down, got up, stretched, peed and peed and peed again. Eventually, we landed. We made it!
We waited in a long line so they could check our passports. We got our luggage and saw a sign for "Customs, nothing to declare." Turns out that "Customs, nothing to declare" is just a bored guy pointing at the exit. Easy!
We made our way to the rental car counter and waited for a family of about 10 people to get two or three cars. It took forever. They were all spread out in line. I mean, really spread out - in a way that none of my fellow US citizens would be. Their bags, strollers, kids, grandparents, were all over the place. We could barely see the counter. One of the kids threw a stuffed animal and hit me in the face. But when one of them, who may or may not have been the dad of the kid who beaned me, heard we were from Oregon, he was all of a sudden very friendly. That seems to be the way in Israel. The people have a different sense of taking up space, and they're brusque until they have a reason to talk to you, and then they're very friendly.
I had booked the car online, it was about $125 for 10 days. At the counter, a very friendly woman asked if we knew about the mandatory insurance. Nope! About $350 for that. Huh?! That's almost three times as much as the car! As if we had a choice...
We found the car and drove away. Luckily, the street signs in Israel are in three languages - Hebrew, Arabic, and English. We speak (and read) English, so that worked for us pretty well. An hour and a half later, we were in Haifa, settling into my wife's cousins' house. On the way in, we saw a couple of cats.
We were all kinds of messed up from the jet lag. For all of you math nerds, here it is in an equation: more than 24 hours of travel + crossing ten time zones = all kinds of messed up.
The jet lag haunted us for a few days. It was rough, but it didn't slow us down. Ok, it slowed us down. But it didn't stop us. What does not kill you makes you stronger. What does not let you sleep makes you more tired. Whatever. The jet lag coming home wasn't as bad. Although this morning my son and I were up at 4am. Before 6:00, we had already eaten several pieces of matzoh with butter and za'atar, two big plates of matzoh brei, and one bagel. So maybe we're not out of the woods yet.
Israel is a weird mix of stuff, a juxtaposition of juxtapositions. There's lots of cool stuff there, and there's really great food, and the people are great, but it's all kinda dirty and a lot of it seems like it's falling apart. Also, there seems to be a bit of a tendency to kill Palestinians, which is pretty lame.
We went to a few different places to see really old stuff. We all thought that was really cool. Except my son. He wanted to know why we were looking at a bunch of rocks that looked just like all the other rocks we had already looked at. He kinda had a point, but at the same time, he was completely missing the point - for those of us pushing 47 or more (remember, my wife recently turned 50), the rocks make us think about stuff that happened a long time ago right at that spot. And a LOT of stuff happened in Israel thousands of years ago. So, like I said - pretty cool. Also, at most of those places, there were cats.
We ate a lot of great food. I tried to keep a photo record of our meals. I was marginally successful. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to post pictures here. Maybe not. I forgot to take a picture of one of my favorites - a Georgian breakfast called khachapuri. But after we ate it, I took a picture of a picture they had on the wall. That counts. It's a fried egg and cheese and maybe spinach in a kind of bread bowl. You rip off pieces of the bread, stir up the stuff inside, and then dip and eat. Oh, so good! We also had the best hummus I've ever had, along with two other things that are similar but not hummus. One is called ful, or something like that. It has fava beans. And the other has a name that I can't remember, but it was explained to me that it's like hummus only different. That one was my favorite. Like almost everything in Israel, it was served with steaming hot pita - kinda like the pita we get here, except softer and chewier and pretty much just all around better. On our last morning in Jerusalem (BTW, we spent a couple of days in Jerusalem), for breakfast we had sabich. The place was recommended to us by a guy we met in line at a falafel stand (Falafel on the Way) on the road about halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The falafel was amazing, and the stand was owned by the cousin of our friend who sometimes lives here in Oregon. Sometimes he seems to live in Rochester, sometimes Brooklyn, and maybe even sometimes in Israel. It's hard to tell. Anyway, he told us to go to the falafel stand and we did. And when we were there, we met a local. We were standing in line and realized that the entire menu was in Hebrew. Most of Israel is very English-friendly. Almost everyone speaks English, and many of the restaurants have English menus. But not all. And this falafel stand had only Hebrew. We tried using our Google Translate app, which takes a picture and gives hilariously inaccurate translations. But while we fumbled, the guy behind us in line offered to translate for us. He was the son of Americans who had settled in Israel, right down the street from the falafel stand, in the 70s. His name was Yehuda (Hoodie), and he was as friendly as most of the Israelis we talked to. We tried to talk to our friend's cousin, who also spoke fluent English, but he pretty much just wanted to know what we wanted on our falafel. Everything, of course.
Hoodie sat and ate with us, and he told us he was going soon to South Africa with his friends' band, the Solomon Brothers. Their style is kinda like Mumford and Sons or the Lumineers, and they get flown around the world for gigs. Hoodie was going with them as a groupie. When we got back in the car, we found them on Spotify and listened to a few songs - they're pretty good! He and my wife became Facebook friends, and before we left, he told us to try out this sabich place in Jerusalem. So, on our last morning in Jerusalem, we had sabich for breakfast. It's kinda like a falafel pita, except instead of falafel it has thinly-sliced fried eggplant. Now, like most sane people, we don't usually love eggplant. Except sometimes it's really good. Well this sabich was amazing. I mean, really amazing. Some of the best food I had in Israel, along with the hummus and hummus-like stuff and the Georgian egg and cheese and bread thing. And the food at the Arab restaurants. And lots of other stuff. Ok, the food in Israel is amazing.
The night before we ate the sabich, we found a restaurant on google near our hotel and went for dinner. It was probably the worst food we had on our trip. We sat down, and a few guys started playing music. It sounded familiar. My wife and I looked at each other - wouldn't it be funny... Sure enough, it was the Solomon Brothers. In between stops on their world tour, they were playing for the dinner crowd at an Italian restaurant in downtown Jerusalem. Small world! Hoodie says that kind of thing happens all the time in Israel. You know, you meet a random stranger in line at a falafel shack, and he tells you about his friends' band, and then a couple of days later in a different city, that band is playing at the restaurant you randomly find on google, just before they leave to play a few gigs in South Africa. Right?
One of the weird things about Israel is that they have a lot of instant coffee. They also have a lot of espresso, and Turkish coffee, and Arabic coffee, which are all really good. I especially liked the Arabic coffee. They boil the grounds in a pot of water with cardamom, then serve it in a small cup after a meal. It's delicious. But also there's a lot of instant coffee, which is really not delicious. Didn't we all figure that out about 40 years ago? In our hotels, we wanted to make sure our instant coffee wasn't decaf. The first night, we took photos and texted our friend from Oregon/Rochester/Brooklyn/maybe-Israel, because he speaks and reads Hebrew. He assured us that none of our instant coffee was decaf. Later in the trip, at a different hotel, we had an even greater selection of instant coffee. We used the Google Translate app to figure out what we were dealing with. Here's what we discovered:
coffee #1: Instant coffee. This one was easy, cuz it said "instant coffee" in English.
coffee #2: According to Google Translate, this one was "100% pure coffee to mouth without frost." Great! I was kinda worried about the frost. And also that maybe it was coffee to foot, which I wasn't really in the mood for.
coffee #3: Another Google translation. "Coffee Basilla 100% Coffee beans Freeze 1.8 grams It is better to use the embedded in the backgammon." Um...
Ok, this was a tough decision. On the one hand, I was pretty confident the first one was instant coffee. But on the other hand, I wasn't sure whether or not that one had frost. The third one was clearly just making fun of us, it could have been anything. The second one, though, addressed all of my concerns right there on the label. The choice was clear! Also, there was an espresso machine in the lobby, for those crazies who didn't want instant coffee. Whatever.
When we were in Jerusalem, we went to the Mahane Yehuda market. It was really cool. It was bustling with locals and tourists, and vendors were selling meat, fish, coffee, fruits and vegetables, cheeses, sweets, wine and liquor, coffee, and more. Also, they sold spices. The night before we left Jerusalem, my wife and I left our son in the hotel and spent some quality time and money in a spice shop. When we buy spices here in Oregon, we usually get em a couple ounces at a time. You know, just about enough to fill a spice jar. But in Israel, we got caught up in the whole experience. They had so many bowls overflowing with fragrant spices and spice mixes. Every time we asked about one, the guy picked up a bunch in his scoop and let us smell it, then put some in our hands to taste. Of course, they were all delicious. And some of them, we can't get here at home. So we got a bit carried away. We went in looking for za'atar. We left with za'atar, shawarma mix, green zhug mix, red zhug mix, sumac, and a whole lot of turmeric/ginger/ginseng/lemongrass/papaya/etc. tea. We were gonna get just one lifetime supply of tea, but by that point, I was all hopped up on the scents and the excitement of "the spice." I didn't think it was enough, so he doubled it (what's two lifetimes worth of tea among friends?) My wife made him put some back. In all, we had more than six pounds of spices and tea. In Israel, that's not even three kilograms, though... So, you know. Totally reasonable.
The most difficult thing about being in Israel was putting gas in our car the first time. I thought it would be easy. After all, I put gas in the car all the time - it'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home. I pulled up to the pump, hopped out, put my credit card in the slot, and lo and behold - three options popped up on the screen, all in Hebrew. I was stunned. What to do? I tried to pump the gas. Nope. I pressed the first option. Nothing. Second option. Nada. Third option. How do you say nothing in Hebrew? I stood there and stared. WTF!? All over Israel there's English, but here at the gas station, I'm a stranger in a strange land. My wife got out of the car and asked a nice lady at the next pump if she could help. Of course she could help! Just like all the Israelis we met, she was very friendly. She told us we had to type in our ID number. Huh? From a passport? No, from your ID. From a driver's license? No, not a license, your ID. She showed us a card she had. Didn't look familiar. She gave up and drove away. Thanks for nothing, lady. Not really, I appreciated the effort. So I surfed onto the information superhighway and tried to figure it out. Turns out Israelis have some kind of ID number that they use to buy gas. Nobody else has it. Well that explains the confusion. Maybe the rental car company was supposed to give me a number. Maybe they did and I just didn't realize it. Anyway, I went inside and told the guy I wanted to buy gas, gave him my card and the rest is history.
After we filled up our tank, we went to the Dead Sea. It's weird and awesome. You really do float, a lot. It looks like you're sitting on the ground under a few inches of water, but really you're floating like you've never floated before. Unless you've been to the Dead Sea before, in which case, you're floating just like the last time you were there. Also, the water is oily - it's weird. And it gives me hives. But other than that - awesome!
While we were at the Dead Sea, we went to Masada. It's a fort up on top of a rock plateau. We woke up at 4am, so we could climb the snake path before the sun came up. The snake path is the way the Jews went up and down, a couple of thousand years ago when it was their fort. They must have been in pretty good shape, cuz the snake path is a grueling hike, even before sunrise. It's hard to imagine how difficult it is once the sun's up and it's pushing 32 degrees (x - 32 * 5/9, bitches!). After the Romans laid siege and built a ramp so they wouldn't have to march their army up the snake path, the Jews all killed themselves. Or not, depending on who you believe. We just walked around and looked at a bunch of old rocks that looked a lot like the other old rocks we saw in other places in Israel. Our son was thrilled. In a way, it was payback for him ditching us on the snake path. He's young, so it was easy for him. We're old, so you do the math.
Up there on Masada, we didn't see any cats. But pretty much everywhere else we went - cats. Outside the cousins' house? Cats. Dinner at a restaurant? Cats. Outside the Crusader ruins in Akko/Acre? Cats. Open market in Jerusalem? Cats. Basically, Israel is covered in cats.
