Vacation Email #4 - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem

Hello dear friends,

it's that time again, although I don't think that this email will be quite as long. Oh well, maybe that is for the best. Anyway.....
Two days ago me and the rest of the group went our separate ways. My foot was hurting me and I decided to take a day off while everyone else went to Jerusalem. I had a pretty nice day though. After getting some sunscreen and a notebook (which opens from the back since it's Israeli) I went to hang out at a beachside cafe and read - to keep off my foot. It was pretty nice to just people watch and relax. I ordered some iced coffee and a watermelon and lost myself in a Murikami book. I was reading for a little while when I suddenly realized that I was being watched. I turned to look in the direction of my table and saw a black cat sitting on my table next to me and just watching me with those big green eyes. When she saw me looking she started cleaning herself and still chilled on my table for about 15 minutes. She wasn't after my food or drink, so we just hung out. It felt really cool.

I wrote for a bit afterwards and then went back to reading. A little while later two guys sat in front of me. Apparently they went to the beach to conduct a business meeting of sorts. One guy was French and the other was an American I think. They had the weirdest meeting ever. They started off by discussing if they shopped for underwear in Israel and whether or not Israeli underwear was better and cheaper. Eventually they got to business and I tuned them out for a while. Another interesting thing was that the American guy kept getting personal phone calls and taking them right in the middle of everything. Business is definitely more relaxed here. I say that especially since the French guy at one point took most of his clothes off and just chilled in his boxer briefs. At that point they seriously started messing with the general vibe of the place and I left the beach for home. I just had a very relaxing day. I went to bed at around 10:30 and the rest of the group didn't come home till 1 am.

Their trip was of course more exciting. They went into one cigar store in Jerusalem - Ralph is a cigar fan- and talked with the owner. It seems like in the late 90s a suicide bomber went into that very store and blew himself up. The owner happened to be in the states at the time but his brother was there. Fortunately the brother is Ok, the guys saw him too. Another cool thing that happened is while they were all eating they saw a music video being filmed right on the street by where they were. The singer is very famous in Israel. Daniel something. I'm horrible with names so I don't remember his full name. But overall lots of adventures. A good day. since I wasn't with them the guys left the old city and Yod Vashem for another day which was very nice of them. I think they will tell you guys more in their own emails.

Yesterday everyone stayed in Tel Aviv and took it pretty easy which was just fine with me. In the morning we went to an art fair/market type of a place. some of the jewelry there was really pretty, but it was definitely overpriced. We met Olya's coworker Becky and her husband Yael and hung out with them for a while. I also bought some Israeli table cloths at the market, so mom you are all set :-).

We came back from the market and after a little rest went to the beach. Tel Aviv has an insane amount of jellyfish. It’s crazy. It you walk by the shore you just see a crazy amount of them washed up on the shore. I did my whole cafe by the beach thing again since I didn't want to get my foot dirty, but the rest hung out closer to the water. Ralph and Alex got stung by the jellyfish, but they are both fine. We all also played this paddleball game that's really popular here. It's basically like catch, but with wooden paddles. You get pretty into it. Olya got a massage by a creepy beach massage guy. When he started he brushed her off with a bristled brush, which I thought was hilarious. I guess you had to be there. He did it in a very nonchalant manner like he was brushing crumbs off the table.

In the evening we went to a place called the canyon arena. It's on a marina and a pretty posh part of town. The really rich older crowd lives there. While we were eating we saw one of the cutest kitties ever. Ralph had me throw her some of his fish. She loved us. I forgot to mention earlier that there are cats all over Israel, especially Tel Aviv. People just feed them periodically so they survive pretty well on their own. It's nice to see, a lot of them are really sweet and cute. We walked around a bit after dinner, but the place was practically dead by 11 so me went home and prepared for a long day.

Today we went to Jerusalem again, this time I went with, but Ilyusha decided to spend the day with relatives. We started off at Yod Vashem and it took us over 4 hours there. They have rebuilt and added to it since the last time I was there 2 years ago. Overall it was not an easy thing to walk through but I'm glad we did it. It was definitely something that needs to be done when you are in Jerusalem.

After we ate lunch we headed for the old city. We walked around quite a bit before we made it to the Western Wall. We went to our opposite sides and did our thing. On my way from the wall I saw a couple who were getting married close to it. Ralph suggested that we go to the Christian quarter since it was relatively important to him. We went out of a different gate and suddenly everything was a little off. It took us only a few minutes to realize what it was... We accidentally stumbled into the Muslim quarter instead. We hightailed it out of there at the speed of lightning and consulted a map on the safe Jewish side of things.

We went to the Christian quarter through the Jewish one, which was significantly safer. It was nice to walk around the old city. We saw an old synagogue that was blown up by the Arabs in 1948. It was highly massive. Very cool to check out. When we made it to the Christian quarter I bought this holy water cross thing that I promised to one of my coworkers and Ralph bought some rosaries. We also saw the place where Jesus’ tomb was. I think it was on the Greek Orthodox domain. That basically concluded the old city for us. We walked back through the Armenian quarter, so I guess we saw it all.

On the way home we got lost as usual. It's crazy. Maps don't help you. You're on one street and suddenly you look at the miniscule street sign and realize that you are no longer on any place that you see on the map/ It usually takes us 30 minutes to find our house. Today we resorted to randomly shouting for directions to the cars around us on stoplights. It's fine though. Adds a little flavor of adventure to everything. We finished off by having dinner at a Cuban place then going to an internet cafe.

And here we are my friends, all caught up. You will hear from me in a few days with stories about the Galilee, and the clubbing in Israel. See you next time.

Vacation Email #3 - the end of Eilat, Ein Gedi, and the beginning of Tel Aviv‏

Hope you guys have some time to kill, cause here's the next installment
So the last time I finished writing we were headed to the oceanarium. We drove down and first took in an interactive movie, the kind with the moving seats so that you feel right in the middle of all the action. The movie was in Hebrew, but you could get headphones and plug them in to either the english or russian translation. We all did the english, but for some reason russian sentances could be heard in the background. They were always very satanic and funny. The movie was a little cheesy, but overall very informative and educational. We learned about all sorts of marine life around eilat. After the movie we went on a boat ride with a glass bottom. This was really amazing. Apparently Eilat has an amazing variety of coral and you see all different types growing in the same area. We also saw needle fish and parrot fish and even goldfish. An interesinting little tidbit, in a group of goldfish and parrot fish if there is only one male and he dies the strongest female changes sex to become the alpha male. Weird right? We also checked out the underwater observatory which was very similar to the glass bottom boat but pretty cool overall. I was hurting with the foot so i didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. The guys also went to check out the shark tank, but I stayed back since I was in some pain.
After we came home, everyone slept for a bit and then most people went shopping. Again I slept and rested in my room so that the healing process can begin. The others bought some nice stuff though. I was kind of jealous. The next day we headed to Ein GEdi.

We headed out at about 12:30 or so through the desert in our newly rented Kia. It actually fit us all and our bags pretty comfortably. I think we were all surprised by that fact. On our way to Ein Gedi we stopped by this huge crater that spans something along the lines of 40 km. It was naturally formed, not due to any meteors or anything like that. Just due to the lay of the land. The guys decided to go through the little museum with a movie, but I just hung out outside and enjoyed the view. They highly enjoyed the movie though for two reasons. Reason #1 - The movie starts out in the following way... "The earth is 4.5 billion years old. That's 4.5 BILLION years. WE know that 4.5 billion years is a difficult concept to grasp so we will refer to the earth's life span as 1 day but in reality it's 4.5 BILLION!!!! years old. 4.5. Billion." Reason #2 - quote from the movie - "This land was very rich in culture. The nabateans went through here, the romans, etc and the culture flourished. then the arabs came.... [meaningful silence] then after the creation of israel it is starting to flourish again". Pretty impartial movie huh?
Our next order of business was to see the town of Dimona. It seems that durring the 70s a group of black jews came over to israel and established a colony called Dimona. They brought soul food and music. Now their culture is a mix of chicago and israel. The music is a mix of gospel, reggae, and something alltogether new. They are jews in all traditions, but on top of that they pnly dress in natural fabrics and are vegans. They are known in Israel as the Black Hebrews. When we got to Dimona we were very dissapointed though since we saw no black people there, however we saw an overabundance of Russians. I think the Russians took over Dimona and inched out the blacks. It was around 4 pm in Friday when we got there and the place looked deserted. Almost nothing was open. WE saw a kiosk called "KABKA3" but they were closed and watching the world cup. They told us that we had no chance finding anything to eat there, but that there is a cafe on the way out of town. We drove around some more and got pretty lost. Antonov was sent to a grocery store for some info on restaurants and emerged a few minutes later with a challah. It seems that the girl told him we had no place to go to eat, and gave him the challah so that we could at least have that for Shabbat. We devoured the challah in seconds.

WE finally got out of town and cound a little out of the way cafe. It also sold oversized toys and all sorts of weird stuff. The owner made us basically grilled bread with tomatoes and cheese inside. They were very good. While we were eating Sereja talked with the owner who happened to have some very particular views on the black hebrews. He basically said that they were all criminals who came to israel so that they would not be put in jail. He also said that they are polygamists. Apparently they were not even considered Israeli citizens until about 5 years ago and they do not have to serve in the israeli army. The only ones who serve are volunteers. Also no one has a college education and they live in a very close knit community who survives by playing the music i mentioned earlier. There is a following of it and they make money performing and selling CDs. Basically the guy is not a fan. So I don't know how much of what he said was valid. Now you know what I know.

It was pretty late when we made it to Ein Gedi. We just made it to dinner which was incredible. WE ended up staying in a hotel that was run by a kibbutz. The grounds of the hotel are like a botanical Garden. They have an amazing variety of plants and flowers that are in bloom. The smell is just different there. Since a lot of people where still having stomach flu/food oisoning issues, we decided to hold off on Masada untill our last morinig and mainly relax the next day.

We got up at 7am in order to eat breakfast and make the guided hike of the waterfall. Durring the hike we saw a whole giant group of Ibexes which are like mountain goats. There were families of them and just general groups moving from mountain to mountain. At first there was no water in site, but the higher we went the more water we saw. At one point we stopped for 10 minutes and swam in the spring under the waterfall. WE hiked all the way up to the main waterfall where the kibbuttz gets its water supply from. Again the plants that grew there were absolutely amazing. Here we splintered off from the group and took our time splashing in the spring under the waterfall. the water was great and being under the waterfall was a great feeling.

Since we had such a stressfull morning we decided to go to the Ein Gedi Spa next. We made massage appointments as soon as we got in and then relaxed a little bit by swimming in the Dead sea and covering ourselves in the dead sea mud. I put a bag on my leg and it worked for a while, until I really swam away from the shore.. and then ..... AAAAHHHHHHHHHH the pain, the horrible searing pain. Sereja had to tow me to shore. it was not fun, but we have pictures that capture that lovely moment. My massage was a piece of heaven. I didn't even feel fully conscious. Only the part that was being worked on felt alive. 1 hour full body massage fealt awfully nice. We finished off the day by chilling by the pool and waiting for everyone to get their massage. It was wonderful except for the Russians that were there. They were the most uncivilized people i have ever met. If you are standing in line they just invade your personal space and then plainly just push you out of the way. It's lots of fun. But other than that the experience was wonderful.

When we got back to the hotel we went to sleep pretty quickly since we had to get up at 4 am for the masada. Even though that is the time we got up we did not make it out till after 4:30 and did not get to the masada until about 5. The sun rise was at 5:35 and the hike was said to take about 45 minutes. We hauled ass up those stairs. I think we all almost died on our way up. I made it one minute before the sunrise but we made it non the less. That sunrise was absolutely breathtaking. WE also ran into Nir, the soldier that was on mine and Olya's birthright trip 2 years ago. We also saw Varshavsky and some gy who i totally don't remember but who went to Champaign - younger generation of the Makaron group. We tagged along with the russian birthright group for a while and listened to a lecture about the Masada and then tood another 45 mnutes to hike down. We saw people basically not feeling well and turning back on our way down.

We made it to our hotel with just enough time to each breakfast and check out. We were told by our tel aviv guy that he will only be available at 2:30 so we did not have a lot of time to waste. After we passed Jerusalem however we finally stopped at a pharmach and loaded up on PeptoBismo, Aloe and Neosporin. When we got to our Tel aviv appartment we were floored. It's amazing and only a block from the beach. We basically settled in, did laundry and food shopping and then just walked on the beach for a bit.

That's all folks, thanks for your patience and you will be getting more emails soon

love, Katya

Vacation email #2 Eilat and Jordan‏

HI everyone.

So the last time I ended with the fact that we will go and snorkel with the dolphins. That was a wonderful experience. We were split into groups of 4 so the Shafies were separate from us which was a bit unfortunate, but we didn't really look at each other much anyway during this activity. We were first told not to touch the dolphins. They will touch us if they want to. We were also given wetsuits to keep our body temp up and to help us float. being in one of those things feels like being in a sausage casing. It was definitely different. We snorkeled with our guide for a half an hour. The dolphins were only a few feet away from us at times, swimming around us and under us. We were warned that they were feisty since there were 8 females and the alpha make died a few days ago. This was really sad because dolphins are in heat this time of the year. The only male there is a 10 month old baby and dolphins don't sexually mature until they are about ten. There was also a dolphin named Luna :-). While we were swimming one of the dolphins touched Ralph. Overall it was wonderful. We had a short 10 minute video made of the experience. When we were done we just hung out at the beach for a few hours. None of us burned which was pretty amazing. We were able to swim up really close to the dolphin enclosure and almost got to touch a dolphin that came by for a friendly chat. Very cool stuff. The only bad part was that there were coral reefs right where we were swimming and I cut my foot on one of them. I didn't think much of it while I was swimming, but it really started bleeding when I got out of the water. Don't worry, I will walk again soon. :-).

After a while, we decided to head back home. We changed and showered and walked along the boardwalk going into little shops. We were told of a club called Touch that we should visit. We also ate some good Israeli food. On the way back to the hotel we bought the nastiest alcohol I have ever tasted called Kiglevich so that we could pre-drink. I decided to skip the club since I didn't want to irritate my foot more than it was but I drank along with everyone anyway. EEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW. Yuck is all i have to say. I do not think Sereja will ever be put in charge of alcohol again. Ech. After the pre-drinking I went to bed but the others partied it up at Touch. They said that there was a whole mass of girls in tank tops and mini skirts with M-16s clubbing. I love night clubs and guns in Israel. Olya and Antonov made it back pretty early, but the rest of the boys must have partied it up until 3 in the morning. I don't think they had a great morning.

Thankfully were were only picked up to go to the Jordanian border at 11. For some reason the road to the border is probably the worst road in Eilat. We needed to be in a Jeep just to get there. It took us about a half an hour to get through the border and we were had to walk through no man's land unescorted. It was a little freaky, especially since there were "Danger Mines" signs on either side of us. Also as we got closer to the Jordan side we saw a sign that said, literally "Welcome You". We thought is was funny that they even wrote with an accent. Once we got through border patrol we were met by one of our many Jordanian guides, Mohammad (3 out of 4 guides there were named Mohammad). He drove us to Aqaba to the travel agency. We got there at around 12:30. We were told that it was too hot to go to the desert now and we will take off at 4 pm, which meant that we had some time to walk around and chill with the locals.

For some reason there were very few people out - maybe it was because it was around 40 degrees Celsius!! We went to a market/strip mall type of place and some of us bought stuff. Then we came into another store that made sand bottles with designs in them. Inside it was decorated with signs such as "Ded Sea" and another one that was freakily spelled. The group decided to get some bottles - like 10 for different friends. We were offered coffee while we waited. We also got to talk to one of the locals. He was an electrician who had 12 kids. He told us that he personally doesn't have anything against us because we are Americans, since we are not the ones killing innocent children in Iraq, but not everyone feels like him. He told us that they show Americans killing children almost every day on the TV. Over all he was pretty friendly and even got us a deal on water to save us some money. We hung out with him until our souvenirs were ready. We left and walked to a restaurant that was recommended to us by our Jordanian guide called Ali Baba. The first thing Olya and I noticed when we walked in, was that we were the only women. Later on we found out that all of the women were on a different floor which made us a bit uncomfortable. We got over it when other Jordanian non religious couples came together and sat in our section. I guess the really weird thing in Jordan is that even though a lot of people are really hard core Muslims, a lot are not, and no one pushes their beliefs on others. Our food was heavenly and the waiters were really nice. They saw that some of us were not feeling great and gave us special teas to settle the stomach. We were very happy with everything.

When we got back we piled in to 2 Toyota trucks and headed towards Wadi Rum which means Valley of sand. While on the highway I noticed that the mountains were striped. I guess they are made of sedimentary rock, so that they have layers of black, green, red and tan. At one point we got off the highway and went off-roading through the desert. It was amazing, though seriously bumpy ride. Our truck got stuck on some railroad tracks, but once the driver engaged the four wheel drive we were fine. At one point we came to a patch of flatrock and the driver put the car in Neutral and got out. We have pictures of us riding in a car with the driver walking next to it and smoking a cigarette. We also opened the doors and stood on the foot-ledges so that we could see everything. Very cool experience. We started driving again and slowly the terrain went from rocky to sandy. There were sand dunes and ralph actually slid down one on his stomach at one point. Lots and lots of fun. We drove around some more taking in the breathtaking views. I am not joking, there are no words to describe how beautiful everything is. After 10 more minutes the drivers pulled over next to some mountains. We got out and took some pictures. We were told that room service would be by shortly with tea. We thought it was a joke until another truck got out with another guide (Mohammad #2) and 3 french people. In the back of the truck there was a big kettle with tea. The guides started a fire and pretty soon we were drinking one of the 100s of cups of tea that we would have throughout the day. our main guide also told us a story while we were drinking.

A long time ago there lived a king. One time he was riding through the desert when he stopped at an oasis and saw the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. He fell for her immediately and decided to marry her. He found out who her parents were and went to ask them for her hand in marriage. The parents were ecstatic that they had the honor of being asked and said that there would be no problem if their daughter agrees.The daughter however said no. The king saw her at the oasis again and asked her why she refused him. "well," she said, "you are a bad kind, your people don't respect or love you and i see myself as a queen. I would not want to marry an unworthy king like you" "what can I do to change your mind?" the king asked in desperation. "you need to find yourself a wise man." the girl replied,"and have him follow you everywhere and teach you how to behave. If you change yur ways and I start hearing good things about you from the people, then I will be happy to marry you" And that is exactly what the king did. He had his staff find him the wisest wise man and bring him over to his castle. A week went by and one day the king was very irritable and excited and slipped down the stairs breaking his arm. Upon seeing this the wise man said "Thank god!" The king was furious with such a response and had his guards through the wise man in jail. "Thank god" the wise man said once more when he heard of the kings order. After a month the kings arm healed and he went riding in the desert again. He rode through a mirage and his body guards lost sight of him. Shortly he cam to a group of people that cheered when they saw him and got him of his horse. They told him that they were very happy that he cams since according to their religion once a year they sit in the desert and wait for the first man to ride by. When they find such a man they sacrifice him to their god and can leave the desert. "but you can't sacrifice me the king screamed, I am the king" The people didn't care who he was. They were going to sacrifice him no matter what, king or no king. Eventually he resigned and started taking his clothes off. When the people saw the king's healed arm they told him to get dressed again. He was not whole and not a good enough sacrifice to their god. Relieved the king went back to his body guards. He sent for his wise man and asked him: "why did you say thank god when i broke my arm, and again when i put you in jail?" "well," the wise man said, "you were so nasty that I knew one day you would be riding through the desert and not wait for your body guards and meet this group of people. Once they saw you they would want to sacrifice you and your broken arm would save your life. And if you didn't throw me in jail I would be riding alongside you and then I would be killed" "you are a wise man indeed" said the king. He started listening to the wise man's advice and pretty soon he was loved and reveared by his people. He was able to marry the girl and lived happily ever after.

It was so cool to lay in the sand drinking tea and listening to that story. Eventually we got up and started driving again. The shadows made the mountains look amazing. Off-roading was a blast again. We rode until some mountains close to the Bedouin tents and climbed up to see the sun setting. Olya, Ralph and I went climbing for a little bit. It was a lot of fun and gave us a completely breathtaking view of everything. The desert stretched out as far as the eye could see in all directions. I know I keep saying amazing a lot in this email, but it's just because there really are no words to describe the feeling of being surrounded by something so huge and permanent. you start thinking of time in a completely different way. We climbed down and walked to the bedouin camp. We relaxed a bit as our food was prepared. It was all very simple food, rice potatoes, hummus. there was also chicken, but Olya was the only one who really ate a bit of it - something that she would later regret. After dinner our original guide left and we were left with Mohammad # 2 who offered to take us star gazing into the desert. We all eagerly agreed. We danced with some of the locals for a while and then the seven of us piled into the toyota truck designed to hold 4 people. The shafrans, antonov and Ilyusha were in the back and Ralph and I sat in the front with the driver. I got to sit on the arm rest between the two seats half leaning back so that I wouldn't hit my head on the ceiling. all i have to say is "thank you Bally's for my ab workouts". We rode out for about ten minutes and got out of the truck. We turned off the car and looked up. I have never seen so many stars. The sky was completely riddled with them. There were shooting stars and all the constellations we could think of. Our eyes couldn't even concentrate on anything there were so many. we just all layed on our backs and looked up in silence for a while. All of us were blown away. Eventually we went back to camp. Mohammad #2 drove us back and showed us that he could find the way even if he turned off the lights. We told him we believed him, but he demonstrated for us several times anyway.

At camp most of us went to sleep pretty soon after that. I got a marriage proposal from Mohammad #2 and of course refused. It was definitely a strange experience. We had originally chosen to sleep outside but we were being eaten alive by the mosquitoes so eventually we went into the tents. None of us really slept that much that night anyway. too much excitement and mosquitoes do not make for a restful night. This really sucked since Petra, where we were going the next day was going to be closed starting at noon because it was hosting a huge party for all Nobel prize winners (past and current) We ended up getting up at 5:30 in the morning in order to see Petra on time.

Our next guide (Mohammad 3) picked us up at around 6:30. olya was not feeling well so the ride was not a pleasant one for her. I would say that we got to Petra at about 9:30. The people who lived in Petra were there since 1000 bc. Their culture was amazing. They controlled the caravan routes and learned from all of the people that went by. The basically had a plumbing system with ceramic and diverted water around their city so that they would not get flooded. They lived in caves whose facades they chiseled out into beautiful arches and columns. They believed in life after death and buried the dead in the houses that they lived in with all of their possessions. They also believed in 3 gods. Their main one was the god of Rock. They had a whole city with an amphitheater, treasury, altars, and markets. The amphitheater was originally built to hold 3000 people, but was later expanded to hold 7000. It's absolutely insane how advanced these people were. Eventually though they fell to the Roman Empire. The Romans built on top of their city putting in their own sewer system (an open one vs. the closed off pipes that were already there. The Romans also paved their roads and some of that survived to this day. After the Romans it was the Byzantines that took over. The merely added a few walls and etched crosses at the tops of some buildings. Petra has been a secret from Europe until the 1800s when an explorer heard about it and investigated on his own. 85% of Petra is still under ground. Even now its absolutely enormous. We were done with our tour at noon, ate some lunch and waited for a shuttle that was supposed to pick us up. At first we were told that the shuttle would be there in 15 minutes, but ended up having to wait for an hour and a half in the heat and the sun. People kept coming and there was almost a riot when the shuttle bus finally came. I thought that we would get trampled. Our guide, however pushed everyone aside, and we were almost the first people who made it on to the shuttle.

We got to our van at about 2:30 and then rode for 2 hours to the border. This time around the Israelis searched us, and our bags and absolutely everything we had. They didn't care when we were going to Jordan, but thy cared a lot when we came back. Sereja got the most thorough inspection, but eventually we were let through. As soon as we got back everyone went to sleep. I was woken up at 9:30 by sereja and we went to have dinner. Some of us walked around a bit afterward, but my foot really hurt so I went back to the room. Our plan for today is to go to the oceanarium which is underwater and supposedly THE attraction in Eilat, jet-ski for a little bit and relax at the beach. We are still a bit exhausted from Jordan. We all agree that Jordan was the experience of a lifetime, but we are glad to be back "home" in Israel anyway. I will write you guys another novel shortly. Thanks for your patience with my insane emails.

love you all!!

Vacation part 1 rome and arrival to Tel Aviv

Hi Everyone.

Wow, I can't believe how much has happened already and it's only the beginning. First of all, If any of you would like to know our itinerary or any random info such as Olya and Alex's cell phones and our hotel numbers they are all on wiki.jenya.ws/Israel. Ok so let's start at the very beginning. The Shafrans and I made it to the airport at about 1:30pm. The line for Alitalia was huge. We were sure that Ilyusha would have already gone through it and was worried about us but he showed up about 15 minutes later (covered in mango juice which we found hilarious due to his mango adventures in South America) we all went to check in together and were told that there is a 5 kilo limit (10lbs) on our carry on suitcases. The lady told us we could try out luck at the gate,but that it was impossible to have more than 10 kilos and make it. We were all at about 15 kilos. We took out 1 fold-able duffel bag and threw in our heaviest and least favorite possessions in there to check in, taking the rest of our stuff with us. The flight was about 8 hours to Milan and then about 1 hour to Rome. We made it on time. changed and ate. Ralph's plane was delayed by about 2 hours so we sat in that airport for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOng time. When he finally got to Rome we checked his stuff in with him and then hauled some major ass to the Vatican City.

We basically RAN through the Vatican museum. Thankfully Ralph and Sereja took art history in Rome and they managed to narrate the whole adventure for us. The only two places we slowed down were the Raphael room and the Sistine Chapel. They blew me away. The Chapel was completely restored so no scaffolding or covered walls. It was incredible. Since we were already in the area, we decided to make a short, yet powerful visit to St. Peter's basilica. We got a great view of the plaza, but the line into the basilica was INSANE so we unanimously voted against it.

Our next move was to cab it across town to the coliseum. The cab actually dropped us off quite a distance away but we didn't mind. We walked by the coliseum, and went in to an outdoors cafe with a nice view of it where we devoured some pizza and drank a bit of wine. (I was gone for the next 30 minutes) After paying, we walked around the ruins by the coliseum for a little bit and saw the arc that the Romans built to commemorate their victory after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (synchronicity? i think not). We continued to make a slow paced walk around and hiked up to see the she wolf and Remus and Romulus statue. It was actually pretty small in comparison to every other statue and fountain in Rome.

Our next course of action was to walk towards the Panthenon and maybe get some gelate. We stopped off at a statue of an elephant ant took some fun pictures. Everyone also stopped off at a small cafe for some risotto balls (risotto deep fried with melted mozzerella in the middle - I was not interested) Here is an interesting fact many of you may not have known. 3 years ago when I was going to travel through Europe Rome was originally on my agenda. The shaffies were going to Rome before me and we thought it would be really cool if they hid clues around Rome for me and then made a map so that I could find the clues while seeing all the really worthy sites. Kind of like a tourist treasure hunt. Well, my plans changed and I didn't make it to rome after all, but the clues and the map remained. Olya remembered this on our way and told me that even though the map was forgotten at home she remembers that they hid one clue in a gelate/candy store right by the panetheum. I looked for it but could not find it. However, it was still really cool to be able to stand in the same place where they were 3 years prior leaving me a message. We got our unbelievable, out of this world ice cream and sat on the Pantheum steps for a while people watching. (By this time Olya and my feet were on fire) After we rested for a little bit we decided to go to a large fountain the name of which escapes me at the moment.

Here is where we had our first experience with the street flower vendors. A guy came up to me handing me some flowers. I said i wasn't interested, but he insisted telling me they were free. Finally to get rid of him i took them. Then he started asking Sereja for money. I quickly gave the flowers back and we walked off from the fountain. Sereja wanted to buy some cheese and wine and sit on the Spanish steps. We made it to the grocery store and the wine store just fine but then got a little bit lost. This was quite unfortunate since olya and I could barely walk by this time. Poor olya got blisters on her feet that were just killing her. I was just sore from the standing and the walking. We ended up making a pretty large circle before finding the steps. We pretty much fell on them and the skies opened and the angels sang. We were so tired that we just sat in silence for about 15 minutes. Drinking our wine and eating our cheese. The streets were not really crowded since the World cup match of Italy vs. the US was on. We were slightly nervous about the outcome. Olya needed to do something about her feet so we performed a mcGyver type of medical procedure. She used the wetnaps from the airplane to disinfect her feet. I took one of her pins and held the tip over a lit lighter. then she did her thing with the blisters and covered then with a band aid. The operation was a success. This is also the place where the same flower vendor came up to us every five minutes trying to sell us flowers AGAIN. he got so annoying that we developed an immunity to vendors of all types in a half an hour. Some of the people on the steps had guitars so they TRIED playing gypsy kings songs and hotel California. They were not very good but the people around sang along anyway. After a little while of relaxing on the steps we went to a nearby cafe for dinner. The kitchen was closing at 11 so we had 10 minutes to order. We all had incredibly delicious food. and a lot of fun talking and relaxing. We basically closed out the cafe.

We still had about 8 hours before we had to be back at the airport so we went to the Piazza Novana in hopes of finding a bar that was open late. There were a bunch of street vendors and artists. We were just deciding where to sit down when we heard a guy playing electric guitar. He was amazing. There are no other words to describe him. Olya and I went over and the boys followed. We could have stood there and listened to him all night. He had a recordings of himself on an acoustic guitar prerecorded and he would just play them and play lead electric guitar over them. We heard The Wall and Stairway to heaven. Also a Hotel California. It was now after 1 in the morning so I guess it was not a big surprise that the cops came and gave him a ticket for being loud. He stayed and plyed more after abut 15 minutes of being quiet. We sat at a cafe and could still hear him. The cops came again around two and made him leave. It was pretty unfortunate.

It was quiet on the piazza for about 10 minutes and then we heard LOUD drumming and whistle blowing. It was in the style of marching band meets carnivale. There were some Brazilian kids playing and dancing although it was not capoera it was still cool to watch. They were so energetic (on crack) that they pumped us back up. WE watched them for a little while and then decided to walk to the Camp del furi. It was after 2 in the morning so all the bars were closing. When we got there and saw a lot of cops just standing there ready to contain whatever drunken brawl they saw and a bunch of kids/college drinking and hanging out. The boys spent the last of their cash on some beers and stood around drinking for a little bit. The crowd was a bit rowdy and Olya and I would have probably been scared if the boys were not there. We made our way back to the Piazza Novana and sat at a closed cafe for a bit more. The streets were slowly becoming empty and we figured that we needed to find a cab before they disappeared all together. It took us a while to track one down and we only made it to the airport by 4 am. Sleeping was our only real option at that point so we slept on our bags for about 2/3 hours. Then we were woken up by the noise of the airport.

We slowly got out stuff out of storage, changed, ate breakfast and got on the plane. We were so tired that we slept right through everything - even the food :-). The flight was a little over 3 hours to Israel so we actually got energized by our nap. The airport has really been fixed up since the last time we were here. We didn't even need a shuttle from the plane anymore. It was pretty nice to see. At customs we stood in line and right before it was our turn we were told that the line is closed and were moved to a different line. Sereja was a little nervous about customs so we alll just waited. The couple in font of me were Russian who didn't speak any Hebrew or English. The customs officer asked if anyone could translate and I quickly volunteered. I interrogated the crap out of the couple - well she did and I translated but they made it through just fine. We were up next and we all went together. The customs officer was so happy that she could interrogate the couple easily that she almost didn't ask us any questions and Sereja came in to Israel on his US Passport with no problems. We all breathed a sigh of relief, found our shuttle driver and waited for Antonov, whose flight was only delayed by 4 minutes - damn Swiss. His pilot's name was Captain Schnitzel of Swiss Air so it's no wonder the plane landed on time. Antonov got interrogated hard core so we had to wait for him for a while but he finally came out and we could start our trip.

Our driver was very knowledgeable and helpful. He stopped and bough us some fresh dates from a highway vendor and told us some interesting touristy stuff about Jerusalem/ein gedi/etc. When we were driving though the desert we saw a Bedouin riding a donkey and texting. We all thought that it was really cool. Also we passed by the mountain that was entirely made of salt (Lot's wife from the story of Lot). The trip was really hard on us since the elevation kept changing and the road was a mountain road. I thought that I would not make it, but then we all passed out and slept a lot. We made it to Eilat a little after 9, changed and walked around the board walk. We had a great time talking and drinking. Our waitress spoke Russian so we had no problem talking with her. At 2 in the morning we decided that it was time to sleep and that we would meet up for breakfast at 10 am downstairs. I can tell you that at least my whole room did not wake up until an angry Shafran phone call at 11:30. Now we will go to snorkel with the dolphins. Stay tuned for more fun news from me and the gang.

I miss you all!!!