We had spent most of the day walking through Jerusalem. I had a sprain and had ignored it through the three days now. Now being pretty tired the pain seemed to be amplified It took us about an hour by bus to get from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. It was about 7pm when we got to the Central bus station. Our flight was at 6am the next morning. The trip being short enough we had decided to see a bit more of Tel Aviv and head directly to the airport rather than check into a hostel. But first things first. Find [View Full Entry]

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I didn't much care for the hostel at Jerusalem. It was damp with just an exhaust fan. I felt like i was in a hole! I was up by 7am and checked out by 9am. A quick stop at the information center at Jaffa gate and we were on our way to see the old city. I had barely taken my first snap when it started to rain. And then it poured! My tourist map was pulp in my fist as i shrugged my shoulders trying to fight the cold. by 10am it stopped raining and the sun was out again. [View Full Entry]

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I had heard about the diving schools at Eilat and was quite eager to give it a shot. I also knew that apart from one of my mates, the rest wern't interested. I had to convince this guy to go diving and more so convince myself. So I called up the school and reserved our slot and got them to pick us from the hostel at 9am. Now there was no turning back.. The dive turned out just great! I hope to have some snaps from the underwater camera up here soon. I never thought i'd actually manage to dive. It [View Full Entry]

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If we were to use the GPS route to get to the Dead Sea we'd have reached long past sunset. So how did we get there? :) By road of course. No alien intervention We arrived just before sundown. The strip was quite empty. I guess most of the tourists had long gone. The stretch was totally ours! It was a major thrill to float on the Dead sea. It's just remarkable how such a place could exist in nature! I lay on my back with my hands beneath my head as i floated and watched the sunset in the [View Full Entry]

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9:30am. I met up with my friends by Jaffa's most famous landmark, its clock tower, situated in the Carmel Selzer Plaza. After a quick introduction to the the other two guys the five of us jumped into our Sedan and were on our way towards Mitzpe Ramon. GPS.. makes life so simple. Imagine trying to navigate the Hebrew signboards My leg hurt from the walk down the cobble stones of Old Jaffa. I was advised to rest the leg after the muscle pull but to hell with that. I chose to ignore it. We made a stop at the Ein Avdat [View Full Entry]

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The drive down to Eilat was interesting. You could see Jordan on the left and Egypt on the right as. I hadn't slept much the night before and so took the opportunity now to nap as much as possible in the car. Finding the hostel was easy. There was a Sudanese get together on the premises. We quickly checked in and head onwards to the seafront Eilat is Israel's southernmost city and has a beautiful Marina. The restaurants on the beach with latin music and the sea breeze were just great. After sunset we made our way to the city center [View Full Entry]

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Knowing I'd have limited time, just three days, I had chalked out a detailed itinerary for the 3 days I'd spend here in Israel. I landed at Ben Gurion airport on time. By 5:30am I was through security and looking for the Xchange office. It was initially a struggle to cipher out the English signs from the Hebrew ones. Once I got the hang of it the rest went like clockwork. I even made it to the 5:56am train as intended. The train was empty! Just a guard who passed through the compartments once. Was something wrong? I hopped of at [View Full Entry]

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The last weekend i joined some friends on a trip to Slovakia. We would fly to Prievidza and on to Martin to go fishing. The weather has been just great the last couple of weekends. It's a lot of fun flying a Cessna. Our GPS conked the moment we took off so we wer back to the good ol' maps for navigation. A lot more fun! After roughly a two hour flight we touched down at Prievidza for a lovely lunch at the airfield. the Bojnice castle in the backdrop and the perfect weather were the perfect setting. Not to mention [View Full Entry]

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I spent a lovely weekend in Mikulov, not too far from Brno. This is the heart of the winemaking region. There's a beautiful chateau and a lot of wine cellars to pick from. You can easily go overboard out here and land up picking up a whole trunk full of wine from the rich selection available. Mikulov town square A view of the Holy hill from the Clock of Saint Wenceslas We then drove down to Valtice to pick up some wine from the Chateau's cellar. I was fortunate to catch a glimpse of some traditional folk music in the square. [View Full Entry]

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