Jaffa

Walked around Jaffa with my friend Conol yesterday. Beautiful historic city. One of those places that you could live in and just keep peeling back layers of. Conol has the nicest apartment I have seen in a long long time. Hgh ceilings, rooms that give way to more rooms and more rooms. Mosaic tiled floors and solid hardwood furniture. Lovely. More pics to the left…

More lounging

Another wonderful weekend. Went on a hike Friday morning then went to the Dead Sea for more floating around. You all really have to swim (?) in the Dead Sea once in your lives. It is such a comfortable feeling - like being in a sunny armchair of water.
This time I tried out the mud, which you slather on and then rinse off in the salt water. Skin like butter! I tell ya!
Loads and loads of pictures on Flickr. Enjoy!

More Culture!

Thanks to my friend Sarah (www.lavalove.org) I was introduced to some of the folks at one of Israel’s best dance troupes – Batsheva (www.batsheva.co.il). Last night I drove down (up? across?) to the Suzanne Dellal dance center in Tel Aviv (pictured) to check out their new show called Bertolina. It was amazing. One of the best contemporary dance shows I have ever seen. The dancers were incredible, the costumes were beautiful and the music was wonderful.
Then I found out that all next week is a contemporary dance festival here in Ramallah (here’s the schedule -
http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/showeventsincat.php?cid=8&citid=3) and, tomorrow night I am planning to go and see Michael Barenboim (son of Daniel) play the violin here in Ramallah as well.
Who knew that I would move all the way over to Ramallah and see more cultural events than I ever did in New York?
Funny funny life.

Who needs a doorman anyway?

I went on another hike this weekend, this time to Wadi Zakar (the blue wadi), a very pretty stream bed that wound through lovely olive groves.
We stumbled across some really amazing caves near the wadi and I took the chance to climb down into one and check it out. Bigger than my apartment in New York, lovely and cool in the heat of the day. I am thinking about moving in and saving some cash on rent – you’ll still come visit, right?
Also included in the batch of pics on flickr are some of Ramallah, one of a dinner I went to in Tel Aviv and my last view as we picked up the bus back home after the hike – some kids playing on a garbage heap, chasing the bulldozer around to see what it turns up.
It is really nice to be able to go out and enjoy these lovely hikes, but as the kids reminded me, this is still a very poor place with deep problems.

Culture!

Seems that there was a Mozart festival going on here in the West Bank for the last couple of weeks… (http://www.palestinemusicfestivals.org). So myself and some yahoos from work decided to go down and check out the Requiem gala concert last Wednesday.
It was surprisingly good and the concert hall was really quite fantastic. Beautiful! This city continues to surprise me. I mean, considering that the population is somewhere around 50,000 folks it is a pretty sweet hall.
Some more pictures on flickr.
Also went for another lovely hike on Friday, but couldn’t upload the pics from that just yet. Will do tomorrow.

What a weekend!

Howdy All,

Sorry for the long gap between postings - I have been busy as a little bee at work.
I just got back from a fantastic long weekend. As yesterday was Easter, I had Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. I began the weekend on Thursday night in Jerusalem with Ben and Abigail and their folks. After a nice dinner, we went back to the hotel and slept for a few hours as we had to get up at 3:30am to drive to a climb Masada before the sun comes up and we get fried.
Despite the fact that we got a little lost, we made it to Masada while it was still dark and managed to climb to the top in time to see the sun peek out over the mountains of Jordan. Masada is a fascinating place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada) amazing history and stunning views. After Masada we went down to the lowest place on Earth (the shores of the Dead Sea) and swam (floated) around in the salty water. The Dead Sea is so strange to splash around in, as you cannot keep your arms and legs in the water without effort. Wacky. Next was a short hike into Ein Gedi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Gedi) where we did some more splashing around. Whee.
Back to Jerusalem and as it was Good Friday I decided to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and do the stations of the cross along the Via Dolorosa. Wish I had read this ahead of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Dolorosa) but whatever. It was jammed with folks carrying all sorts of lumber around, so I bought a little (very little) cross and joined in the fun.
Next stop was up North for a Sabbath dinner with a friend of a friend’s family in Khadera. Yummy food, but I ate wayyyy too much (as usual). Saturday I went to Caesaria and checked out some old Roman ruins (aqueducts and such) and then to Tel Aviv for a walk around and another dinner.
Sunday back to Jerusalem with Ben, wandering the markets, eating more yummy food and laughing our way around the city. All in all a fantastic time – thank you Ben!
Of course, all this would be pretty boring without pictures, so click on the Flickr link to the left….

Now it is back to work but I promise to post again as soon as I have something interesting to tell all you folks.