From the World Heritage inscription: The Incense Route was a network of trade routes extending over two thousand kilometers to facilitate the transport of frankincense and myrrh from the Yemen and Oman in the Arabian Peninsula to the Mediterranean. The four Nabatean towns of Haluza, Mamshit, Avdat, and Shivta, with their associated fortresses and agricultural …
I have arrived Israel. 40 years ago, Apollo 8 took the famous photo of the Earth rising over the surface of the Moon. After that photo, many people ooohed and aaaahed about how when you look at the Earth from space, there are no borders or countries and everyone is really just part of one …
What a day. I’m still exhausted even after a night’s sleep. Yesterday was probably the second most grueling day of my travels (the first being the 30 hours I went from the Solomon Islands, to Nauru, to Kiribati, to Fiji, to Hawaii). I got up at 3am in Tel Aviv and left for the airport …
I only have a few hours left in Israel. At 4am tomorrow I take off to the airport for my 7am flight to Rome. I’ll have an eight hour layover in Athens, so I’m going to try and make the best of it and so see the Acropolis in the time I have. It should …
I’ve been in Tel Aviv for two days now. It is a very different city than Jerusalem. For starters, I haven’t seen a single Orthodox Jew here. Zero. Everything here is much more laid back and secular than Jerusalem. In addition to a very large beach area, it also seems very artsy. Some of the …
I got up Easter morning to the sound of bagpipes (yes bagpipes) and headed off to the Church of the Holy Seplechure. While it is Easter for Western Christians, it is Palm Sunday for the Orthodox Churches, and it is the anniversary of the fight fight breaking out between the Greeks and Armenians last year. …
Israel has a very unique tradition on Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). An air raid siren will go off and everyone will stop what they are doing for 2 minutes. People in their cars will stop wherever they are and get out to stand. This video was taken at 10:58 …
I am writing this near the shore of the Dead Sea at the Ein Gedi resort. I’m not staying at the Ein Gedi resort, but the bus dropped me off at the wrong stop and I had to walk about 4k to get here only to find out that the Ein Gedi hostel is 2k …
Don’t get me wrong, Tel Aviv is a nice city, but I didn’t have any plans to stay here for two weeks. My laptop battery finally came in and everything is now fine in computerland. I’ve been here so long I ended being in Tel Aviv during Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day. Unlike memorial day …