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bironicL'shana tova, anyone who's celebrating the new year.
Thought this would be a good time to finish up one of the remaining Israel trip posts. Continued from here.
Day 13: Masada, Dead Sea, Jerusalem.
3:30 a.m., Sunday, July 6. The alarm clocks beep in the dark of a desert night, and 48 sleep-deprived trip participants, at least half of whom were out hiking five hours earlier, stumble out of bed, force down some pound cake, and gather in the guest house lobby. Time to climb Masada!
It was dark.
I turned the contrast waaaaay up on this one to attempt to recapture what the view was like as we started up.
Dark, but not cold. Nice, actually. Except for how the trail went up and up and up and our guide walked on and on and on in front with the athletes while the rest of us trailed behind.
This is the closest you will get to a picture of me in the foreseeable future. :)
The idea was to reach the summit to watch the sunrise, both for the spectacle and to avoid climbing in the heat. I'm not sure how long it was supposed to take us to climb, but I was near the back (not last, just far enough that you could tell I had a desk job), and soon enough the sky grew pink over the dry flats.
Breathless and honestly doubting that I would make it all the way up, but valiantly perseveringbecause even if I gave up on ever using my legs again, I'd still have had to climb back down, at last, at last, I reached the top. Triumph!
Conquered: 900 vertical feet! 700 steps plus ramps! The taunting knowledge that at least three-quarters of the group were already up there, relaxing!
Up top, we stood at the cliff and watched the sun come up over the mountains of Jordan. Um, those'd be the slightly darker purple smudgy bit in the middle.
'Twas pretty.
We took a break for a slightly sweaty group photo. No, not sweaty like that. Dirty minds. (Although there was a point where someone got our two male trip leaders to sling their arms around each other's shoulders and pose. Assaf drew the line when one girl called, "and now can we get one of you two kissing?")
After the respite, we began our tour of the ruins.
Black lines along the stone walls indicated what was original to Roman times (below the line) and reconstructed (above it).
Inside many of the buildings, including this bath house, you could see remnants of the original paint on the walls.
More stairs = death, but wow, what spectacular views we had of and from the ruins.
There was a cute little mouse-type creature on a lower level.
Not sure what this building was, but it had an interesting shape from above and below.
As we toured one side of the mountain, we learned about an intricate series of limestone-lined cisterns the Romans had built to collect, store and purify rainwater in the desert. In one of them, you could see a small pile of stones. I wondered whether they served a purpose in the purification process. Turns out they're what the Romans catapulted up at the resisting Jews later.
We finished by breakfast time. We felt sorry for the people climbing up then, struggling against the intensifying heat. Fortunately—well, relatively fortunately, since it would have been nice to have done this the other way around—we were directed to take the cable car back down.
A view from said cable car:
After a quick breakfast, we hauled our gear onto the bus and drove over to a beach on the Dead Sea for a 45-minute swim-and-shower. I was expecting more salt formations and wacky shapes or colors; maybe those are in the industrial mineral-mining sections. It was a rocky beach, all smooth, slick stones, so the difficulty wasn't in floating once we were in but instead in keeping our balance as the waves tugged at us as we waded in or out. Floating was nice, though.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roga had mentioned certain tingling sensations not usually noted in tourist publications, and many of the girls had sworn off shaving for several days prior in anticipation of the intense salinity, but I didn't have any trouble, luckily. (Some of the girls did, for whatever reason, and so did many of the guys. Poor burning unmentionables.) That is, not until I was getting out and splashed myself in the eye—exactly where one does not want to splash oneself in the Dead Sea—when I stepped in a pool of water deeper than expected. That burned something fierce, but a quick flush from a water bottle took care of it.
Beach-showers all around, and then we drove to Jerusalem, stopping on the way at an Ahava factory where they make skin and spa products from the mud and other minerals at the Sea. Some of the girls who'd been excited to get Ahava products wholesale at the source were disappointed to find that the prices were about the same as in the U.S. I got some dates there. The fruit kind. Then enough other people got dates during the trip that I never got around to eating mine, so they're in my kitchen cabinet now, waiting to be devoured. I'd had no idea before this trip how tasty dates are.
On arriving in Jerusalem, we drove across the valley from the Old City for a brief visual orientation. Then we took a group photo (straight into the sun, and not allowed to keep sunglasses on; note everyone squinting).
Something seemed different about Jerusalem from many of the other cities I've visited, and eventually I figured out that it was because there's no water there—no harbor or river. Of course, it's not surprising, being in a country with a lot of desert, but we'd been on Galilee and the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea enough for it to seem strange, and so many other cities in the world have prospered as ports that Jerusalem seemed even stranger. More ancient, maybe. Or impressing on us that what made Jerusalem special was more than trading—spiritual over commercial, and that's been enough to keep it going.
Anyway, we had the afternoon to wander through the Old City, have lunch and do some souvenir shopping, which many people were itching to do as the clock of our trip was ticking down.
Something I thought was cool about Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular was how the modern butts right up against the ancient. Layers and layers of history. (Have I mentioned in here before about "Tel" in "Tel Aviv" meaning the layers of settlement piled on top of one another?) Boutique shops are set in the thousands-year-old wall; you turn around from a McDonald's and find ruins from Rome, or Greece, or Turkey, or the Crusaders, or...
Some Roman columns in the Old City marketplace.
In one of the sublevels was this ancient mosaic, a stylized map of Jerusalem.
Some windows and railings in the Jewish Quarter:
After lunch/shopping, we reconvened as a group and set out to tour more of the Jewish Quarter and head over to the Western/Wailing Wall. We walked through narrow streets and surprising squares (more columns, more of the same pale stone ["Jerusalem stone"; it's city code that all new buildings have to be constructed with it to maintain visual unity]), until, rounding a corner, we found ourselves on a roof overlooking the Western Wall (Kotel) courtyard, with the golden Dome of the Rock at upper left:
That's about two-thirds on the left for men and one-third on the right for women. Asroga has talked about before, note which side is more crowded.
There were Shoulder Police there, handing shawls to women in tank tops or whose shirt sleeves were deemed too short.
Here's where a lot of people got quiet and intense, preparing to pray and leave notes in the wall for God. I kept an open mind and tried to take note not only of what other people were doing but also of what I thought and felt as an atheist at one of the holiest sites in my religion. (For instance: How do you leave a letter for something you don't believe exists? Consider the experience an exercise in self-examination, clarifying what you hope for for yourself and your loved ones.)
Walking up to the wall.
Up close, people's notes crammed into the cracks.
When you leave the wall, I learned, it's traditional to walk backwards, so you don't turn your back to it until you're a distance away. People who're walking up, waiting their turn, move out of the way of those who've finished and are shuffling their way blindly out.
Leaving the Old City.
Next came more shopping and more food on Ben Yehuda Street, a shopping/dining/nightclub area elsewhere in Jerusalem, that was crammed with Americans, so much so that shopkeepers addressed you in English by default. Weird.
Some people couldn't stop talking about how McDonald's and Burger King were kosher in Israel. I don't think too many people in our group kept kosher, so they'd mostly all had fast food before, but I guess this was a novelty anyway. A couple of the girls went to a Burger King during our free time and got these crowns and celebratory tee shirts.
Day 14: Jerusalem.
Our last full day was spent touring more of Jerusalem, starting with the Mt. Herzl cemetery, where, among others, many soldiers and politicians are buried.
The sign out front still celebrated Israel's 60th anniversary in May 2008.
Rabin's grave:
Some of the graves looked like small, well-kept beds:
After Mt. Herzl, we walked down the hill to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. I was really looking forward to this; like the chance to see the camps in Poland, being assured of visiting Yad Vashem was one of the reasons I picked the March of the Living trip. A lot of people did not want to go, though. They were sick of thinking about the Holocaust and wanted to stay outside or go home, or something. I understood, I guess, but it was annoying when they wouldn't stop complaining and even tried to convince the trip leaders to skip the museum.
We started at the huge museum campus with a visit to the children's memorial, a beautiful memorial that contained a dark room full of mirrors and candle flames so the flames were reflected infinitely deeper, one for every child who perished. Many people came out in tears.
(That photo doesn't do it justice.)
A few more stops with our Elijah Wood-resembling museum guide, and then it was time to enter the museum proper. You're asked not to take pictures inside, for whatever reason, so here is a shot of a sculpture near the entrance. (It looked to me like the thing was vomiting, but even so, its anguish was clear.)
I did enjoy the museum, but I would have enjoyed it more if we'd been able to walk through it on our own instead of being tied to this guide, who stopped in some places I would have spent less time at and skipped exhibits I was interested in; a Holocaust museum should be a place for personal reflection at your own pace, not a place to listen to someone else talk. In my opinion. (I have also heard, though, that the museum in Washington, D.C. is more powerful; when I finally go there one day, I'll be interested to compare the two.)
We were inside for about four hours.
After that, we stopped at the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, surrounded by bulletproof glass and security guards, and with the entrance on the far side of the building facing away from what used to be the Jordan-controlled section of Jerusalem.
Across the street was a sculpted stone Menorah depicting scenes from Jewish history/lore.
And after that, we had our last Sharing Session (omg), filled out evaluation forms that left little room for constructive criticism, changed into going-out-in-the-evening clothes, had dinner together at a cafeteria/restaurant back near Ben Yehuda Street, and were herded to a small bar/dance club, where we were instructed to remain until about 12:30 a.m., at which time we were driven back to the hostel, packed our stuff, and went to the airport to check in for the flight home at 3:00 in the morning.
Except for the few who were staying in the country—like me, itching to hang out withroga and spend some time sleeping, God exploring some more of what I wanted to see, at my own pace.
Coming up in the next and final post…
Thought this would be a good time to finish up one of the remaining Israel trip posts. Continued from here.
Day 13: Masada, Dead Sea, Jerusalem.
3:30 a.m., Sunday, July 6. The alarm clocks beep in the dark of a desert night, and 48 sleep-deprived trip participants, at least half of whom were out hiking five hours earlier, stumble out of bed, force down some pound cake, and gather in the guest house lobby. Time to climb Masada!
It was dark.
I turned the contrast waaaaay up on this one to attempt to recapture what the view was like as we started up.
Dark, but not cold. Nice, actually. Except for how the trail went up and up and up and our guide walked on and on and on in front with the athletes while the rest of us trailed behind.
This is the closest you will get to a picture of me in the foreseeable future. :)
The idea was to reach the summit to watch the sunrise, both for the spectacle and to avoid climbing in the heat. I'm not sure how long it was supposed to take us to climb, but I was near the back (not last, just far enough that you could tell I had a desk job), and soon enough the sky grew pink over the dry flats.
Breathless and honestly doubting that I would make it all the way up, but valiantly persevering
Conquered: 900 vertical feet! 700 steps plus ramps! The taunting knowledge that at least three-quarters of the group were already up there, relaxing!
Up top, we stood at the cliff and watched the sun come up over the mountains of Jordan. Um, those'd be the slightly darker purple smudgy bit in the middle.
'Twas pretty.
We took a break for a slightly sweaty group photo. No, not sweaty like that. Dirty minds. (Although there was a point where someone got our two male trip leaders to sling their arms around each other's shoulders and pose. Assaf drew the line when one girl called, "and now can we get one of you two kissing?")
After the respite, we began our tour of the ruins.
Black lines along the stone walls indicated what was original to Roman times (below the line) and reconstructed (above it).
Inside many of the buildings, including this bath house, you could see remnants of the original paint on the walls.
More stairs = death, but wow, what spectacular views we had of and from the ruins.
There was a cute little mouse-type creature on a lower level.
Not sure what this building was, but it had an interesting shape from above and below.
As we toured one side of the mountain, we learned about an intricate series of limestone-lined cisterns the Romans had built to collect, store and purify rainwater in the desert. In one of them, you could see a small pile of stones. I wondered whether they served a purpose in the purification process. Turns out they're what the Romans catapulted up at the resisting Jews later.
We finished by breakfast time. We felt sorry for the people climbing up then, struggling against the intensifying heat. Fortunately—well, relatively fortunately, since it would have been nice to have done this the other way around—we were directed to take the cable car back down.
A view from said cable car:
After a quick breakfast, we hauled our gear onto the bus and drove over to a beach on the Dead Sea for a 45-minute swim-and-shower. I was expecting more salt formations and wacky shapes or colors; maybe those are in the industrial mineral-mining sections. It was a rocky beach, all smooth, slick stones, so the difficulty wasn't in floating once we were in but instead in keeping our balance as the waves tugged at us as we waded in or out. Floating was nice, though.
roga had mentioned certain tingling sensations not usually noted in tourist publications, and many of the girls had sworn off shaving for several days prior in anticipation of the intense salinity, but I didn't have any trouble, luckily. (Some of the girls did, for whatever reason, and so did many of the guys. Poor burning unmentionables.) That is, not until I was getting out and splashed myself in the eye—exactly where one does not want to splash oneself in the Dead Sea—when I stepped in a pool of water deeper than expected. That burned something fierce, but a quick flush from a water bottle took care of it.Beach-showers all around, and then we drove to Jerusalem, stopping on the way at an Ahava factory where they make skin and spa products from the mud and other minerals at the Sea. Some of the girls who'd been excited to get Ahava products wholesale at the source were disappointed to find that the prices were about the same as in the U.S. I got some dates there. The fruit kind. Then enough other people got dates during the trip that I never got around to eating mine, so they're in my kitchen cabinet now, waiting to be devoured. I'd had no idea before this trip how tasty dates are.
On arriving in Jerusalem, we drove across the valley from the Old City for a brief visual orientation. Then we took a group photo (straight into the sun, and not allowed to keep sunglasses on; note everyone squinting).
Something seemed different about Jerusalem from many of the other cities I've visited, and eventually I figured out that it was because there's no water there—no harbor or river. Of course, it's not surprising, being in a country with a lot of desert, but we'd been on Galilee and the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea enough for it to seem strange, and so many other cities in the world have prospered as ports that Jerusalem seemed even stranger. More ancient, maybe. Or impressing on us that what made Jerusalem special was more than trading—spiritual over commercial, and that's been enough to keep it going.
Anyway, we had the afternoon to wander through the Old City, have lunch and do some souvenir shopping, which many people were itching to do as the clock of our trip was ticking down.
Something I thought was cool about Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular was how the modern butts right up against the ancient. Layers and layers of history. (Have I mentioned in here before about "Tel" in "Tel Aviv" meaning the layers of settlement piled on top of one another?) Boutique shops are set in the thousands-year-old wall; you turn around from a McDonald's and find ruins from Rome, or Greece, or Turkey, or the Crusaders, or...
Some Roman columns in the Old City marketplace.
In one of the sublevels was this ancient mosaic, a stylized map of Jerusalem.
Some windows and railings in the Jewish Quarter:
After lunch/shopping, we reconvened as a group and set out to tour more of the Jewish Quarter and head over to the Western/Wailing Wall. We walked through narrow streets and surprising squares (more columns, more of the same pale stone ["Jerusalem stone"; it's city code that all new buildings have to be constructed with it to maintain visual unity]), until, rounding a corner, we found ourselves on a roof overlooking the Western Wall (Kotel) courtyard, with the golden Dome of the Rock at upper left:
That's about two-thirds on the left for men and one-third on the right for women. As
roga has talked about before, note which side is more crowded. There were Shoulder Police there, handing shawls to women in tank tops or whose shirt sleeves were deemed too short.
Here's where a lot of people got quiet and intense, preparing to pray and leave notes in the wall for God. I kept an open mind and tried to take note not only of what other people were doing but also of what I thought and felt as an atheist at one of the holiest sites in my religion. (For instance: How do you leave a letter for something you don't believe exists? Consider the experience an exercise in self-examination, clarifying what you hope for for yourself and your loved ones.)
Walking up to the wall.
Up close, people's notes crammed into the cracks.
When you leave the wall, I learned, it's traditional to walk backwards, so you don't turn your back to it until you're a distance away. People who're walking up, waiting their turn, move out of the way of those who've finished and are shuffling their way blindly out.
Leaving the Old City.
Next came more shopping and more food on Ben Yehuda Street, a shopping/dining/nightclub area elsewhere in Jerusalem, that was crammed with Americans, so much so that shopkeepers addressed you in English by default. Weird.
Some people couldn't stop talking about how McDonald's and Burger King were kosher in Israel. I don't think too many people in our group kept kosher, so they'd mostly all had fast food before, but I guess this was a novelty anyway. A couple of the girls went to a Burger King during our free time and got these crowns and celebratory tee shirts.
Day 14: Jerusalem.
Our last full day was spent touring more of Jerusalem, starting with the Mt. Herzl cemetery, where, among others, many soldiers and politicians are buried.
The sign out front still celebrated Israel's 60th anniversary in May 2008.
Rabin's grave:
Some of the graves looked like small, well-kept beds:
After Mt. Herzl, we walked down the hill to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. I was really looking forward to this; like the chance to see the camps in Poland, being assured of visiting Yad Vashem was one of the reasons I picked the March of the Living trip. A lot of people did not want to go, though. They were sick of thinking about the Holocaust and wanted to stay outside or go home, or something. I understood, I guess, but it was annoying when they wouldn't stop complaining and even tried to convince the trip leaders to skip the museum.
We started at the huge museum campus with a visit to the children's memorial, a beautiful memorial that contained a dark room full of mirrors and candle flames so the flames were reflected infinitely deeper, one for every child who perished. Many people came out in tears.
(That photo doesn't do it justice.)
A few more stops with our Elijah Wood-resembling museum guide, and then it was time to enter the museum proper. You're asked not to take pictures inside, for whatever reason, so here is a shot of a sculpture near the entrance. (It looked to me like the thing was vomiting, but even so, its anguish was clear.)
I did enjoy the museum, but I would have enjoyed it more if we'd been able to walk through it on our own instead of being tied to this guide, who stopped in some places I would have spent less time at and skipped exhibits I was interested in; a Holocaust museum should be a place for personal reflection at your own pace, not a place to listen to someone else talk. In my opinion. (I have also heard, though, that the museum in Washington, D.C. is more powerful; when I finally go there one day, I'll be interested to compare the two.)
We were inside for about four hours.
After that, we stopped at the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, surrounded by bulletproof glass and security guards, and with the entrance on the far side of the building facing away from what used to be the Jordan-controlled section of Jerusalem.
Across the street was a sculpted stone Menorah depicting scenes from Jewish history/lore.
And after that, we had our last Sharing Session (omg), filled out evaluation forms that left little room for constructive criticism, changed into going-out-in-the-evening clothes, had dinner together at a cafeteria/restaurant back near Ben Yehuda Street, and were herded to a small bar/dance club, where we were instructed to remain until about 12:30 a.m., at which time we were driven back to the hostel, packed our stuff, and went to the airport to check in for the flight home at 3:00 in the morning.
Except for the few who were staying in the country—like me, itching to hang out with
roga and spend some time Coming up in the next and final post…
no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 03:31 pm (UTC)I'm thinking your little mouse-like critter was probably a vole of some kind. *g*
no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 11:08 pm (UTC)If I may intrude :-) It's fun to notice that the higher up you go, the smaller the stones are, because they're from a later period. The wall's actually only a tiny part of the wall that used to surround the Temple, and it continues underground - the level the floor's just risen over the years. The stones get really big there, and there's one stone that's absolutely huge; to quote Wikipedia, "...one of the heaviest objects ever lifted by human beings without powered machinery. The stone has a length of 13.6 meters and an estimated width of between 3.5 and 4.5 meters; estimates place its weight at 570 tons."
no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 11:11 pm (UTC)I don't think I realized the stones were quite that big, either. Makes people feel all the more dwarfed/humble as they approach, maybe.
no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 11:54 pm (UTC)Or perhaps you'd like this art print of a golden spiny mouse, for the low low price of $149.99.99.99.
;-D
Edited to close parentheses. D'oh!
no subject
Date: Oct. 1st, 2008 01:33 am (UTC)Forget cats and dogs -- give me rodents any day.
no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 11:10 pm (UTC)You forgot that one of the reasons for managing the climb to the top was "impress hot guide with my awesomeness".
no subject
Date: Sep. 30th, 2008 11:12 pm (UTC)