Every Day is Sunday

JW: I’ve always said I’d try snow skiing only if I could do it in 114 degree heat with my wife in a burqa.  I thought I was safe. . .

We arrived in Dubai at the hottest time of the year.  The main attractions in Dubai are the mammoth shopping malls throughout the city, and when it’s 114 degrees outside it’s too hot to do anything else besides cruise the mall.

Throughout Africa and most of the Middle East, we stuck out like sore thumbs.  In Dubai we decided to try a new tactic for assimilating into the local culture.  We bought a burqa and a thobe and turned our day at the mall into a cultural experience.

EE:  It was quite a different experience to see the world through a sliver of a sheet.  You lose your peripheral vision so it’s hard to see.  On the positive side, it didn’t matter what I was wearing underneath and no men looked at me.  The cons were extensive, including the fact that it was really hot underneath all that nylon and impossible to eat.  When I walked past Western women their eyes would widen and roll in disgust.  Fellow burqa ladies would stare.  I wasn’t sure if it was a stare of solidarity or if I was wearing it wrong.

Walking around the enormous Mall of the Emirates we stumbled into the epitome of Dubai’s “if you build it they will come” culture…a ski slope in the middle of the desert.  “Ski Dubai” is a gleaming futuristic structure the size of three football fields and covered in 60 tons of snow.  Dotted with a few fake trees, rocks, and sealed by an eggshell blue “sky,” it’s supposed to look like the Swiss alps.

JW: I had never put on a pair of skis in my life, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ski in the desert.

EE: I gave Jeff a few pointers on the bunny hill, made a few runs so he could watch how it’s done, and then prayed that, inshallah, he didn’t destroy his body.

JW: I managed to make three runs without seriously hurting myself so I consider the whole adventure to be a great success.

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EE: While Jeff was busying himself with yard sales on the slopes, I was enthralled by the snow tubing burqa ladies.

Burqa Lady on a Snow Tube

After awhile my fingers and camera were starting to freeze.  I need some respite from 22 degree conditions so I headed for the heated chalet conveniently located at the top of the “slopes.”  While sipping hot coco I read the flowing headline: “UAE selected as the new global headquarters for the International Renewable Energy Agency.”  An environmental group headquartered in the UAE?  Seriously??  Dubai makes Vegas look eco-friendly.

View of Ski Dubai from the outside

After a long day we took a taxi out to our hotel to get some rest.  We were pretty excited about the hotel because it was very cheap for a Dubai hotel.  But no sooner had we turned out the lights than we started to hear the thump, thump, thump of a baseline.  It was like Tel Aviv all over again.  I popped an Ambien.  Jeff went out to investigate.
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JW: I made my way to the complete opposite side of the hotel building and finally found the source of the ridiculously loud music.  There was no signage and no indication that this was a club except for the huge bouncer standing just outside the door.  I walked past the bouncer and into what seemed to be an alternate universe.

On the far wall were 12 young girls all sitting on a bench.  They were all wearing tight and somewhat suggestive clothing, but their shoulders and knees were covered.  There was one girl dancing around the stage by herself.  She wasn’t doing a dance routine, she was just shuffling around the dance floor looking sleepy and a bit bored.  It was like something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie.

There were a row of tables facing the dance floor with about 15 men scattered at the various tables, most of them sitting by themselves.  That’s when I realized I had walked into a Dubai strip club – without, of course, the actual stripping.

The music was so loud I could barely hear myself think.  A waiter came over and directed me to a table.  He tried to scream something in my ear but I couldn’t hear him.  Finally he pointed to the bar and I pointed to a Heineken.

I sat down just as the song was ending.  An MC came up, thanked the performer and announced the next dancer (it was all in Arabic but I got the jist).  The first girl bowed and took her place along the back wall with the other girls.  Half way through the song the MC approached the new dancer and lightly placed a tiara on the girl’s head, and then pulled it off.  The MC looked back into the audience and repeated this process three more times.

When the MC walked off stage I went up to him and yelled as loud as I could in his ear, “What is the deal with the tiara?”  He yelled back, “That’s how you tip the girls.  Each time I crown a girl its 100 dirhams [about $30].”
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Dubai is an improbable city.  From Ski Dubai to the seven-star hotel shaped like a sail, it’s a city that can turn you off by its vulgarity or draw you in with its boldness.  After two days we were repulsed and yet thoroughly entertained.  We’re glad we went but we probably won’t go back – at least until next ski season.

Burj Al-Arab -- a self-proclaimed 7 Star hotel

Special thanks to Mark Waner for supplying the first line of this post.

We’ve had some high points on this trip, but we experienced our lowest point in Jordan.  We drove from Petra down 1,385 feet below sea level to the Dead Sea – the lowest point on earth.

With a name like the Dead Sea, we expected the water to be dark, murky and cold.  In fact the water was warm, inviting and crystal blue.  It was a strange and amusing feeling to be so buoyant in the water.  The salt content was so high that we couldn’t dunk our heads in the water even if we wanted to.  We spent our first morning just hanging out in the water reading the paper.

After months of budget travel, we splurged and stayed at the Movenpick Dead Sea Resort.  It had a huge wow factor. In addition to all the regular amenities of a good hotel, the Movenpick has every kind of pool you could possibly want – a lap pool, infinity pool, salt water pool, adults-only pool, a “beach pool” (complete with sand to make it look and feel like the beach), and several glorious massage pools.

We spent our days lounging in one of the spa pools, and then headed over to the infinity pool where a professional DJ spinned a “Sunset Set” each night.

One of the best perks were the vats of Dead Sea mud that the hotel staff collected and sifted for the guests.  We lathered up and let the minerals do their work.  

EE:  I now understand why people spend thousands of dollars on “Dead Sea” beauty products. After a few days looking covered in mud (and looking freakish), my skin never felt or looked so good.  I’m a cynic turned believer.  Jeff voiced some objections to sending home dirt, but I’m hooked and so the mud is in the mail.

Monster of the Dead Sea

At a rooftop party in Washington DC (something we sorely missed this summer!) Sara Sheridan told us about her amazing trip to Petra, Jordan.  Then fellow travelers in Egypt described Petra as a must-see.  Then backpackers in Dahab told us we absolutely had to visit Petra before we die.  We were sold.

Petra definitely lived up to its billing as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.  The Nabataeans constructed the city in 100 BC by carving dramatic fascades and structures into the soft rock.  This “City of Rock” was lost to the western world until 1812 when the Swiss explorer Joann Burckhardt disguised himself as “Ibrahim ibn Abd Allah,” a bearded, turban-wearing, Arabic-speaking pilgrim and was granted access to Petra by the Bedouins.  (What is truly amazing is that this turban-wearing fraud also went on to discover the temples of Abu Simbel less than one year later.  We feel lucky just having seen these two sites in the same year — this guy actually found them!) 

The most well-known image in Petra is “the Treasury.”  Contrary to popular opinion, the Nabataeans did not carve the 150-foot high fascade out of rock to serve as a movie set for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” 

JW:  I was really disappointed to learn that, unlike in the movie, there is no booty-trapped entranceway inside the tomb or a 2000 year-old knight guarding the grail.  In fact, there’s nothing at all.  The doorway at the Treasury leads to a large empty square room.  Damn you Spielberg!

EE:  The detailed work on the rock-hewn Treasury building was cool – and even more impressive was the fact that for almost 5 full minutes the busloads of tourists disappeared and we had the entire place to ourselves.

We both agreed that the Treasury wasn’t even the most impressive site in Petra. 

JW:  Forget the hand-carved facades, I was wowed by the natural beauty of the Siq – the mile-long walkway that serves as the main entrance to Petra.  The Siq cuts through two gigantic rock formations that shoot up 500 feet and, at times, block out most of the sun.  Although it looks like a river cut the path through these immense rocks, in fact Petra sits on a fault line and the Siq was created by plate tectonics.  Nature beats man!   

EE:  No no no, the main draw of Petra is the ingenuity of humankind.  The Nabataeans looked at these blank rocks and saw an amphitheater, tombs, and even the Treasury.  And when they were finished with those, these carved the most impressive structure of all: the Monastery.  After nearly an hour doing switchbacks up the mountain we were rewarded with an amazing view of this ancient structure.  Nature may have created the space but humankind had the vision to build an entire city out of rock. 

We saw Petra by early morning (love that 4:00 am alarm) and then went back for the “Petra by Night” experience.  It was a great way to finish our two-day trip to Petra.  The Siq was lit by more than 1,500 candles and a full moon — it was a mental picture we’ll never forget.

The candle and moonlit Siq opened up to the Treasury which was dotted with hundreds of little flames. We were invited to sit on the mats on the ground, drink tea, and listen to traditional Bedouin music.  About half-way through the performance, we lay back on the mats and stared up at the Treasury and the stars beyond it.  It was truly a magical experience. 

We don’t want to get political on this blog, but it turns out that everything about Israel is political.  For example, even the title of this post “Occupied Territories” is political.  We could have called it “Palestine” which most people living in East Jerusalem would prefer because it implies a Palestinian claim of sovereignty over the territory.

Or we could have called it the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”  This is the term the United Nations and the European Union use, although some Israelis object to this term because they think it disregards legitimate Israeli claims to parts of the West Bank. 

In the end, we settled on “Occupied Territories” because that’s the term the U.S. State Department uses (and also how it was labeled on the map that Avis gave to us when we rented our car in Jerusalem).  This semantic issue gave us some insight into how difficult it will be to broker a peace deal between these parties.

Politics aside, all relevant sides would agree that on our way to Jordan we crossed the “Green Line” from Israel into the West Bank. 

There are many myths about the dangers associated with visiting the West Bank.  We heard, at various times and by various people, that: 

-  you can’t drive your own car into the West Bank (you need a guided tour);

- you need special documents when you cross the Green Line from the West Bank back into Israel; 

-  it could take hours to cross back into Israel because every car is searched; and

- you will be a target if you drive around the West Bank with Israeli license plates on your car. 

Like many of the travel myths we’ve heard on this trip, all of these are false.  The most reliable information we got was from the general manager of our hotel in East Jerusalem who told us we’d have no problem driving in and out.

We began our journey to Bethlehem by driving through the highly controversial West Bank wall (the Israelis call it “security fence” while the Palestinians call it “jidar al-fasl al-unsuri” which means “racial segregation wall).   

The Israeli guard at the checkpoint waived us through and we crossed without incident.  It turns out that Bethlehem looks a lot like the rest of Jerusalem.   

Ironically, we drove from the Jewish homeland into this Islamic territory in order to visit one the oldest continuously operated churches in the world.  The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem marks the birthplace of JC.

EE:  All week I’ve been touring around synagogues and mosques without a problem.  The one house of worship I get kicked out of is a Catholic Church.  

JW:  If she wasn’t so mad I would have been dying laughing.

EE:  So I’ve been in the church for 15 minutes and this guy comes up to me – he’s a tour guide with a nametag – and he says that I’m not dressed appropriately.  But before I have a chance to say anything he calls over one of the priests and tells the priest that he thinks my shorts are too short.  Am I back in Catholic school??  I definitely would have passed Sister Stella’s “ruler test.” I was wearing backpacker shorts which are just as long (if not longer) down my leg than Jeff’s shorts - which really got me mad. The priest agreed with the tour guide and I got tossed from the Church of the Nativity. 

JW: What I should have done (I found out later) was storm out of the church in solidarity with my woman.  Instead, I found the spot where Jesus was born and took a picture.

JW:  The one mistake we made (Erin doesn’t count the shorts) was not bringing a good map of Bethlehem.  While Erin is going on a tirade about the misogyny of the Catholic Church, I am getting us really lost in the West Bank as the sun going down.  Yikes.  Luckily, everyone we stopped on the side of the road was very nice and they helped us navigate out toward the Israeli side.

It was an action-packed afternoon and a good segue for our trip from Israel eastward into the heart of the Arab world.

A week before we arrived in Tel Aviv we were sitting in a Jerusalem restaurant enjoying a delicious Kosher meal.  Erin ordered the pasta and asked the waiter to bring her some parmesan cheese.  He shook his head. “If you want parmesan cheese on your pasta,” he said, “you have to go to Sin City.”  We gave him a quizzical look – we need to go to Vegas?  No, he was talking about that crazy, wild, meat-and-dairy mixing city of Tel Aviv.

Right away Tel Aviv lived up to its reputation.  It was late at night when we showed up at our rented apartment only to find that it was four floors above a club. Even on the fourth floor we could feel the baseline of “Hungry Eyes” reverberating in the bedframe.  Who in the world is blowing that much voltage for the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack?  Erin put money that we were sleeping above a gay club.  Jeff went to investigate.  Turned out to be a strip club. 

We couldn’t get over how different Tel Aviv was from Jerusalem.  Dirty dancers were working the pole five floors below, but Erin couldn’t even get a side parmesan cheese with her pasta in Jerusalem.  

At least the room was nice.  It looked like a page out of a Pottery Barn catalogue with a wet bar.  And we didn’t even need to carry a key – all we had to do was enter a 4-digit number in the keypad on every door.  We laughed about how this place would be perfect for strippers to take their clients.  Wait a minute… oh that’s gross.  We moved the next morning.

We found new digs and explored Tel Aviv.  We discovered it’s a very cool city with a gritty feel to it –the kind of place where artists practice their set while they wait for their clothes to dry in the Laundromat. 

Also, you can’t help but love a city where it takes only 20 minutes to walk from the heart of downtown to fabulous beaches.  

We heard that the club Levontin 7 was a cool place to see live music, and so we decided to take our chances and see whatever band was playing that night.  Headlining was an Israeli singer/songwriter named Hadara Levin Areddy who was like a crazy combination of Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, and Mos Def.  She sat behind the piano sipping wine and playing upbeat folk ballads for her first set, and then for her second set invited a 6”5’ black guy from Lesotho on stage to beat box while she rapped on top of it.  Somehow she managed to pulled it off.

On our last night in the city we met up with Karen, a friend of Tal’s who works in the Peace Players office in Tel Aviv.  Karen and her husband Tomar took us out for dinner and drinks at a real Tel Aviv institution — a bar that doesn’t look like much from the outside but is full of fun and interesting people on the inside. 

We felt like we had met our kindred spirits in Karen and Tomar.  They told us about how they dropped everything to travel the world a few years ago, which included a eight month stint roaming around India on a motorcycle.  We were blown away.  

We got some great tips and recommendations for our own Indian adventure.  To give us an idea about the crazy traffic in India, Karen told us that when she walked out of the train station in Mumbai she said to Tomar, “Wow, this is the biggest parking lot I’ve ever seen.”  It wasn’t until all the cars started inching forward at once did she realize that they were standing in the middle of the street.

All our talk of traveling the world was giving Tomar itchy feet.  He has a great job working for a multi-national corporation but complained that he can never remember where he parked his car at the end of the day because every day is the exact same.  Over Gelato on Ben Yahuda street, we almost convinced them to join us for another round in India.

Tel Aviv was an amazing secular adventure and a perfect way to round out our Israeli experience.

Israel is a land of great religious diversity. After exploring Jeff’s Jewish roots in Tsfat, we made our way to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus may have walked on water at Galilee, but Erin couldn’t seem to get the water to cooperate. 

Near the Sea of Galilee are the natural hot springs of Hamei Tveria, which are known for their medicinal qualities.

JW: We navigated our way to the hot springs without a map and discovered that the springs were not free and open to the public. The water was actually collected in concrete pools and accessible only after we paid the entrance fee for a spa.  

EE: Alarm bells started to go off when walked into a complex that looked like a run-down YMCA. It wasn’t exactly what I’d pictured when I heard we were going to a natural spring “spa.” 

JW:  The water in the pools looked a little murky, but I figured the murkiness was caused by all the “medicinal qualities” of the water. . . so I jumped right in.

EE:  As we entered the “therapeutic pools” the first thing I noticed was 20 people wading in a luke warm water.  Hmm, is this a therapeutic pool or dirty bath water?  The only thing medicinal was the amount of antibiotics I was going need to kill the fungi acquired at this place.  

JW: We agreed to disagree about the hot springs.

Not too far from the ”natural springs” was the pure and holy water of the Jordan River - the very place JC was baptized by John.  It wasn’t clear whether we needed a ticket to enter the baptismal site, so we may or may not have snuck into one of the most holy places in the Christian religion.

EE: Feeling a bit dirty from the “natural hot springs” and a bit guilty (damn that catholic guilt) about walking through the entrance gate in the middle of a huge group of Nigerian tourists, I ran for the holy water to cleanse my body and soul.

JW: I wasn’t sure about following Erin into the water, especially because I didn’t have one of those cool white baptismal sheets that everyone else was wearing.  But Erin was pretty persuasive…

EE:  I reminded Jeff that Jesus was a Jew and told him to get his tukas in the water. I read from the Torah on Friday, it was only fair that I get to baptize him on Sunday.

And just when we thought we couldn’t possibly pack any more religion into the day, we stumbled across the beautiful Baha’i Shrine and Temple in Haifa. 

It turns out that Haifa is the world center of the Baha’i religion, a relatively new religion founded in Iran in 1844.  As travelers making our way across the globe, we especially liked the Baha’i central message: humanity is one single race and the time has come for humanity’s unification into one global society.  They had some pretty cool gardens, too.

Our day of religious pilgrimage ended, appropriately enough, with a visit to Gad.  We dropped in on our old friend from Antarctica for some wonderful homegrown tea and conversation. 

We updated him about our travels and itinerary, and he told us about some of his own adventures.  We got really jealous when Gad told us about the time he was stationed in Dahab as an soldier in the Israeli army (when Israel still controlled the Sinai Peninsula) and how he bought his own scuba equipment so he could dive every day.   

After a long day and many different religious sites, we said goodbye to our hosts and started our long drive down the coast to Sin City (aka Tel Aviv). 

For months Erin has dubbed this leg our trip as her “birthright trip.”  After only a few days in the homeland, she was telling Jeff to “stop kvetching,” to “rest his keppe” and to get his “tuchas into bed.”  Eager to celebrate all things Israeli we made our way to Tsfat, an ancient religious town and center for Jewish Kabbalah.

We asked a local what people do in Tsfat on a Friday night and he told us that the entire town shuts down for Shabbat.  He suggested we attend services with him that night at the Beirav Synagogue.  We thought it was a great idea – so we set out to buy Jeff the appropriate headgear for his first Friday night service in more than 15 years. 

A Rare Sight

In addition to being the center for Kabbalah, Tsfat is also an art center with a thriving artist colony.  We poked our heads into a few workshops and even bought our first major piece of art on the trip.

After a day of wandering around art galleries and trying on yarmulkes, we needed a break from shopping so we stopped into a local cheese shop – Erin was in heaven after months on the African continent without cheese.  We weren’t in a hurry so we just sat in the shop eating cheese and talking with the shop’s owners.  After a while, the owner’s son asked if we were planning on taking a Mikvah because he needed a ride out there.  We had no idea what a Mikvah was or where it was located, but we said we’d be happy to give him a ride.

On our drive out to the Mikvah site, our friend explained that a mikvah (literally “collection of water”) is a pool of natural water.  Men and women immerse themselves in the Mikvah just before the Sabbath to restore their spiritual purity.  Unfortunately there were a number of other men at the Mikvah site and so Erin wasn’t able to participate. 

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Jeff:  We climbed up a steep hill to a concrete structure built into the ground that collected water from a small waterfall.  There were 10-12 men at the site who were either waiting to get into the pool or who had just exited.  There was room for about four people in the pool at a time, but the men were entering one at a time. 

Nobody was speaking and so I just followed my friend’s lead by disrobing and waiting for my turn.  Following the same process as the other men, I entered the pool and dipped my head forward so I was submerged completely in the water.  I dunked myself three times (kind of like a reverse baptism) before getting to my feet, throwing water on my body and leaving the pool.  I didn’t have a towel, and so like centuries of Israelis before me, I moved to a sunny spot and let the sun do its work.  I don’t know whether the mikvah cleansed my spirit, but I felt calm and renewed as I breathed the clean air and looked out over the serene hills of the Galilee.

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After Jeff’s Mikvah we were definitely ready for Friday night services.  Our local friend wasn’t joking about the town shutting down.  There wasn’t a car on the road or a single shop open for business.  We walked through the quiet streets to the Beirav Synagogue. 

Although Beirav is one of the new synagogues in Tsfat, it is probably the most popular.  Luckily we arrived early because the crowd quickly overflowed into the street.  The synagogue isn’t affiliated with one stream of Judaism and so the room was filled with ultra orthodox, Hassidim, and secular Israelis.  After a few opening prayers, the service turned festive.  The rabbi led everyone in lively singing and the men danced around the room in a series of tight circles.  The service was very fun – the only unfortunate thing was that they separated the men and women by a partition and a curtain and so we couldn’t enjoy the experience together. 

It had been a long day and we decided to head back after services.  Our Israeli friend Gad (see Antarctica) graciously invited us to spend a few days at a flat he owned in Tsfat.  After some confusion about the address (and a lot of knocking on strangers’ doors at 11 pm), we collected the key from a neighbor and settled into our new digs.  Gad had just sold the flat (the closing was in a few days) and so the place was sparse, but it was exactly what we needed for a few days and at the right price.

We had no plan for Jerusalem.  When our bus pulled into the station, the only things we wanted to accomplish on our first night was to buy a guidebook and find some Matzah Ball soup.  This magical city had other ideas.  Within two hours we found ourselves standing within the walls of the Old City in a sea of sparkling lights.

It all started when we decided to book the cheapest hostel in Jerusalem.  Coming from Dahab (where our awesome hostel cost a whopping $20 a night), it was quite a shock to see that the worst hostels in Jerusalem start at $100 per night.  Just when we were beginning to give up hope, we saw that Trip Advisor’s #2 hotel in all of Jerusalem was available for just $40 USD per day.  It seemed too good to be true, but the Trip Advisor reviews were so favorable we decided to take the chance.

We should have known something was up when none of the taxi drivers at the bus station seemed to know the hotel.  When we finally found a cab driver to take us there, we discovered that the hostel was in East Jerusalem – the Palestinian section of city. 

Erin:  As we stood in middle of our sparsely decorated room in East Jerusalem, my first thought was: Should we move?  But before I could even pose the question, the hotel’s manager knocked at our door to deliver a full bowl of fruit and two cups of deliciously rich chocolate ice-cream.  I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels on this trip, but none knew me well enough to deliver ice cream to my door upon arrival.  We had to give the place a chance…

Jeff: This wasn’t exactly where I thought we’d spend our first night in the Jewish homeland.  But everyone at the hotel was very nice and I thought it would be interesting to see the city from a different perspective.

When we ventured into our neighborhood to find some food it felt like we were still in Egypt.  The women wore headscarves, the men looked Egyptian, and all of the signs for the shops and restaurants were in Arabic.  Our chances of finding some Kosher food for dinner fell from slim to none.

Thinking we’d have better luck in West Jerusalem, we started to make our way down past the Old City when we noticed the lights.   

As we got closer, we found ourselves swept into a sea of people all making their way to the gates of the Old City.  It was the first night of the “Light in Jerusalem” festival.  Typically empty at night, the Old City was teeming with people and electricity.

We thought it was exceedingly nice (and truly unnecessary) for them to organize a festival just to celebrate our arrival in the city.  We were a little tired but we thought it would be rude if we didn’t stop and enjoy the festivities they had prepared especially for us.  We spent a few hours enjoying the beautifully lit landscapes and art installations. 

We returned to the Old Quarter the next day to see the place in an entirely different light.  Thursday is “Bar Mitzvah” day at the Western Wall and witnessed several festive comings-of-age.

In addition to being the homeland for Jews, Jerusalem is also an important site in the history of the Christian religion.  We saw where Jesus Christ was born, where he was condemned, where he received the cross, where he died, and where he ascended into heaven. 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre - Site of Jesus' Crucifixion

According to our guidebook, most historians and archeologists agree that many of these revered sites were probably located in a different part of Jerusalem.  We decided not to let a little science get in the way of our Christian pilgrimage through the old city.

Although Jerusalem doesn’t feature prominently in Islamic religious texts (the city is not mentioned in the Koran), there is a strong historical connection between Islam and Jerusalem.  After Mohammed’s death, his successor (Caliph Omar) captured Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 638 and began constructing Islamic sites in the city.  The most famous is the Dome of the Rock Mosque, which was later claimed to be the site that Mohammad visited in a dream before his death.  Various Islamic dynasties based in Syria, Turkey and Egypt controlled Jerusalem for the next 1,300 years and re-built the beautiful mosque several times.

Unfortunately, Jerusalem’s rich historical and religious history is the very thing that tears the city apart.  There is an anxious energy that lies just below the surface of the city, most likely fueled by the strong presence of Israeli army soldiers and by the Palestinian flags that adorn many buildings in the east side of the city.

At first we were apprehensive about staying in the Palestinian section of the city, but in the end we were very glad for the experience.  Jerusalem is a city divided, but it is also integrated in important ways.  We met two of our neighbors who describe themselves as Palestinians but who are students at the Hebrew University and take all their classes in Hebrew.  They went out of their way to help us – giving us a ride in their car, showing us around the University, and helping us navigate the bus system.

Although most of the Palestinians we met in our neighborhood were great, we met others who clearly carried around a lot of anger with them.  One afternoon we hailed a taxi driven by a Palestinian man.  Instead of starting his meter, he began to negotiate a fare for our ride.  We explained we didn’t want to negotiate and told him to either start his meter or let us out.  He didn’t let us out, but he didn’t start his meter either. 

This should have been a routine argument with a taxi driver (we’ve had many in Washington DC and on this trip), but our driver quickly lost his temper.  The situation escalated into a shouting match and then a physical struggle as he tried to prevent Jeff from getting out of the car at a stoplight.  Once we were safely out of the car, he cursed at us and at our country and threw his coffee at us.  Luckily the coffee was cold and he only managed to hit Jeff’s leg.

As we stood on the side of the road in East Jerusalem trying to regain our composure and wiping the coffee of Jeff’s leg, we tried to process exactly what just happened. This may have been an isolated incident by one disgruntled cab driver. But this confrontation could also speak to the resentment that lies just under the surface in Jerusalem. We’re not sure but the tension in Jerusalem is so thick it’s almost palatable.

We decided to cheer ourselves up with a trip to Ben Yehuda street, the pedestrian downtown area in the middle of the west Jerusalem.  We ordered a falafel and some pizza from the street vendors, and had one of the most memorable meals of this trip while sitting on a bench in the middle of the street.  The falafels were incredible and the pizza was as good as anything you can get on the east side of Manhattan. 

Jerusalem was a great introduction to our Israel trip.  We decided to rent a car and set out to explore the rest of this beautiful and controversial country on our own.

Our hike began at midnight.  We had five hours to climb to the top of Mt. Sinai if we wanted to make it in time for sunrise.

The climb itself wasn’t too strenuous and the moon was so bright we didn’t even need to turn on our headlamps.  Unfortunately there were tons of tourists on the trail – many of them who decided to hire camels and ride up the mountain.  But the trail wasn’t quite big enough for camels and people to walk comfortably next to each other.  It was like driving on the highway in a small car and constantly being passed by big smelly 18-wheelers.  The camel smell became so overpowering that we had to duck into a Bedouin hut for some tea so we could let them pass. 

Even with the lazy tourists on camels, the climb was totally worth it.  We reached the top of Mt. Sinai with plenty of time to see the orange sun peak over the mountain range.

As day broke a priest started his early morning prayers.  It was a compelling reminder of the spiritual power that Mt. Sinai still retains thousands of years after the time of Moses.

Although the Egyptian sun was like a battering ram, we enjoyed the spectacular views on the long hike down.

At the bottom of Mt. Sinai is a monastery that claims to be the site of the original “burning bush.”  We were pretty skeptical about these claims until we took a closer look.  The branches were still hot to the touch!

The burning bush didn’t say anything about leading the Israelites out of Egypt, but it did wish us a pleasant journey as we made our own way to the homeland. 

We planned to stay in Dahab for two nights.  We stayed for seven. 

Dahab is a tranquil seaside village that we never wanted to leave.  Unlike other parts of the Sinai Peninsula, Dahab doesn’t have any skyscraper hotels or fancy restaurants.  It caters to chilled-out backpackers looking to spend their days snorkeling in the Red Sea and their nights sitting by the water watching the sun set over Saudi Arabia.  It’s a little slice of heaven.

The snorkeling in Dahab was just as good as any of the snorkeling we’ve done on the Great Barrier Reef or off the coast of Kenya.  You don’t even need to hire a boat – you can just snorkel right off the beach.

The locals told us that if we wanted the best snorkeling in the area, we needed to head to Abu Ras Galum, a small Bedouin village an hour north of Dahab up the coastline.  It’s the best because there aren’t any roads to Abu Ras Galum which meant fewer tourists and the real kicker  — the only way to get there is by camel! 

After our long camel ride we arrived at the Bedouin village and we immediately grabbed our snorkeling gear and headed for the beach.  The temperature was perfect, the water was crystal blue, and the sun shone so brightly we could see 30 feet below the surface.  We spotted a giant sea turtle that let us swim with her for about 10 minutes before she headed out to deeper waters. 

After a morning seeing beautiful coral fish, sting rays and turtles, we took a break for lunch (fried fish caught that day), learned the recipe for special Bedouin tea, and escaped the heat in one of the Bedouin huts.

After another long snorkeling session in the afternoon, we boarded our camels and headed back to Dahab – our little piece of paradise on the Red Sea.