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Sunday (email post)
Our guide told us that new year's eve isn't a big deal in Jerusalem. It is in Eilat, though; we couldn't get a dinner reservation for our whole group after 7:30PM (when we expected to arrive). Oops. It is also very noisy here tonight. Eilat likes to party, I gather.
Anyway...
We left Jerusalem this morning and headed south. The transition from city to desert is sudden; there's no intermediate green. It's also a rapid descent; we dropped about 2500 feet in about 10 minutes of driving. (And continued to drop; Jerusalem is 3000 feet above sea level, and if I recall correctly, the shore of the dead sea is 1200 feet below. Our guide said it's the lowest (land) point in the world.)
The desert is not devoid of green; Israeli farmers figured out how to do irrigation (drip irrigation, more specifically) a while back. They taught the Palestinians who taught the Jordanians, so there is green on both sides of the Jordan river in places where it wouldn't occur naturally.
Our first stop was the Ahava factory and outlet store. Ahava creams, soaps, moisturizers, etc are made from the minerals in the dead sea. The store is obviously geared toward tourists -- a lot of "buy one get one free" stuff and clear instruction about how to get the VAT (tax) refund and how much you have to spend to get it. The family that came out of the Na'ot outlet with several bags also came out of this one with several bags; I asked if they had brought an empty suitcase to take stuff home and they said "of course". :-)
From there we went to Ein Gedi nature preserve. It's very pretty, especially the waterfalls. We were told that the ibex and one type of bird are not at all afraid of humans, but I was disappointed to only glimpse two ibex (ibexes?) in the distance and none of the birds (or the third critter we were told about, the hydrax).
Next up was Masada (Metzadeh, which means fortress, in Hebrew). I had always envisioned Masada as a small fort on the top of a hill -- yes, I knew there were 1000 people up there, but that doesn't necessarily imply much space when it comes to military fortifications. What I didn't know was that Herod the Great (yes, same guy with all the other big building projects) built himself a fortress, a couple of palaces, and assorted other support structures up there, just in case he ever needed it. It's not known whether he ever visited. So it was already all up there (along with stores of food and cisterns for collecting water) when, toward the end of the Jewish revolt against Rome, the last remnant holed up there. After a couple of years this was too much of an embarrassment for the Romans, so they sent something like 10,000 men to remove the rebels from the mountain. (This is all according to Josephus, who wasn't there.)
The structures up there are part original and part reconstruction. Most walls have a (usually-jagged) black line across them; below the line is original and above is what was added to give a better idea of what the place looked like. Masada was destroyed by an earthquake, not something more gradual, so I guess they had a pretty good idea of how to put it back together.
I saw someone in a wheelchair up there, and I wonder how she managed. The ground is somewhat uneven and rocky there. Actually, most of the places we've visited have been inaccessible in that way; you can't get through Ein Gedi without a lot of stairs, uneven paths, and places where you really want to hold onto railings or rock outcroppings, for instance. And you can forget about Ts'fat and the old city in Jerusalem. (I'm not saying they should destroy centuries-old streets in pursuit of accessibility; they shouldn't. I just wonder how tour groups handle the problem.)
We spent a few hours at a hotel/spa on the dead sea. Most people floated (you don't really swim) in the dead sea; I don't wear that little clothing out in public, so I didn't -- and after hearing the warnings, I'm not sure I would have even if I had brought a swimming suit, though I'm sure the warnings were presented as more dire than they need to be to make the "be careful and don't be stupid, especially the kids" point. The dead sea is 34% salt; accidentally swallowing some of that will at minimum lead to your stomach getting pumped out, and our tour guide once saw an older tourist die (the stuff got in the lungs and two hours later the tourist was dead). Now granted, that's rare and unlikely; the tourist slipped on the way in or out, fell, and panicked, getting a mouthful in the prodess. But I don't see so well, and do I know what my reflexes would do? Anyway, not an issue this time anyway. Maybe next time I'll come with shorts and a T-shirt; I saw people doing that instead of swimsuits, which I hadn't thought of.
I had planned to spend the time just walking around outside and taking in the scenery. It was bright and sunny when we were at Masada, but raining by the time we finished lunch and ventured out to the sea. So, shrug. Nothing you can do about the weather. I'm glad it wasn't raining when we were at Masada.
We arrived in Eilat around 7. It's very different from Jerusalem; our guide compared it to Las Vegas. There are lots of people out on the streets, including lots of teens; I don't know how much of that is due to new year's eve and how much is normal, but I gather it's not too unusual. Tonight I saw lots of neon, lots of sidewalk vendors, and lots of non-kosher food. Somehow I think this place is pretty lively on Friday nights.
A group of us went out looking for food and found a restaurant that could seat us. (Non-kosher, but I know how to deal with that.) The food was good, but then it took more than an hour to pay afterwards, and it wasn't because the place was that busy. Rather, the waiter who said at the beinning that separate checks (or at least separate credit cards) wouldn't be a problem was mistaken. I was on the verge of computing a value, leaving dollars on the table (if I'd had enough shekelim it would have been easier), and leaving.
While tonight was an extreme case, I've noticed throughout this trip that it takes a while to get a check at the end of a meal here. (Usually it's just been slow, as opposed to tonight which was inept and involved multiple computations, mixed-up credit cards, and more.) I don't have a lot of data points, so maybe I've just been unlucky. Israelies have a reputation for being pushy; I would have thought that would mean checks being pushed at you as soon as practical, just in case you would forget or something.
While we were sitting around (outdoors, by the way) at the restaurant, I heard a burst of loud cracking sounds. I assumed it was firecrackers rather than gunfire, but I looked. 'Cause while I don't feel unsafe here, large gatherings of people along borders in the middle east could be attractive targets. Once that was confirmed, I joined the folks out on the sidewalk watching the fireworks show.
Our trip is winding down, and Tuesday night we fly home. We've had a lot of different experiences, and I've really enjoyed seeing the country. Jerusalem is something that has to be experienced; descriptions just didn't do it justice for me. My rabbi said he usually starts tours up north and then brings people into Jerusalem several days later; tours usually start earlier in the week, but with us arriving Friday morning we needed to worry about Shabbat immediately. But I really liked being in Jerusalem twice on this trip; it served as an anchor of sorts. We've done lots of things but never been away from Jerusalem for more than a couple days. I think that works.
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Thanks for the internet hints. For next time I'll know to dig around in proxy settings. I figured the odds of the problem being on my end were low since I'd used the same browser to reach the same sites in Jerusalem, but if the proxy stuff is somehow imposed by the network, that would explain it. (This is a Mac, by the way, so no IE, but I know how to find the analogous stuff in Firefox.)