Israel
Am currently in Jerusalem! My tour officially ended after breakfast today. This evening I am heading to Tel Aviv either by nesha (private taxi transfer) or shalut (public taxi transfer) or bus for my 5am flight back to London, via Riga (Latvia). I fly into Gatwick, then have six hours to get out to Stansted to fly to Bilbao and take a bux and taxi on to Zarautz, just outside San Sebastian, where I am camping for Running Of The Bulls. Not looking forward to thethree flights and countless buses over the next 24 hours. Only in Spain for a few days, then back to London for a night, then I fly out to Cuba (via a stopover in Paris)...its a good thing that the flight to Cuba takes ten hours, I will need to catch up on sleep badly by Friday.
Israel has been fantastic! So much to see and do. Been to Bethlehem, where I went to the Church of Nativity (there is a grotto where Jesus was born), Jericho, the Holocaust Museum here in Jerusalem, the Holy Sepuchle Church (even been in Jesus' tomb), went to the Dead Sea yesterday - which was SO STRANGE, the water was really oily and if you walked in past your waist your legs would involuntarily float straight up! Seen all the religious and historical sights I wanted to see. The bazaar here in the Old City of Jerusalem is great, as well. It's very safe here, can walk around at night and not feel threatened, there is a little bit of hassle from men particularly in the bazaar but no worse than Morocco or Turkey. It's very interesting as it's the holiest city in the world for Christians and Jews and the third most holiest site for Muslims. So you get the Arabs in their long robes and fabric over their head, and the Hasidic Jews and their black clothes (I am obsessed with their clothes! And the mens curly strands of hair at the sides of their heads! And the different hats, some are fur, some are black wide-brimmed ones! And they wear these three piece suits in black EVERY DAY!) and the Christians. I have been staying at a guesthouse for Christian pilgrims (even though I am clearly a tourist - I am not even a Christian!). There are quite alot of nuns and monks here. Yesterday one of the girls on my tour and I followed the 14 Stations Of The Cross procession headed by the Franciscan monks. That was very interesting, there was quite a big crowd and they all knew the words to all the songs that were sung as we walked in between stations.
It is also very interesting being here in the West Bank and having to continually go through checkpoints when going in and out of Palestinian territory. It's like going into a different country. I feel really bad for the Palestinians - no country of citizenship, no voting rights, they can't even fly out from Tel Aviv airport, they have to do the border corssing on land like I did via the King Hussein Bridge and fly out from Amman to the rest of the world. It took us hours to get through that border crossing and I have no doubt that the Palestinians time to get through all of the border security would be at least double the time it took me. I now have an Israel stamp on my passport, so I can't go to Syria or Lebanon while I have this stamp. I will have to wait until I'm on my next passport to do this. That's okay, because I am pretty sure that by the time I get home from this trip I will need a new passport anyway.
Internet time is expensive and almost up, so I am off to organise my way to Tel Aviv!
