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Published: January 11th 2010
Setting, Saturday night - after the group has left:
I waited in the hotel lobby of the Prima Kings, waiting for my friend Kfi to make her way back into Jerusalem from Efrat. When she arrived I lugged my giant bags around the traffic intersection multiple times in the wrong direction looking for her and her friends car (possible? apparently). There ended up not being enough room in the car for everyone so the car took my bags and kfi and I took the bus into Talpiot to meet some of her friends for a game of bowling. Apparently this is what they do whenever they are in Jerusalem, and it shows, considering that in general I'm not great at bowling this was a massacre. We didn't stay out too late, eventually ending up back at Kfi's very very very large apartment in Katamon, where I settled in to wait to hear from my family. Eventually my dad called me once Shabbat in America had ended and caught me up on all the news. He decided that I should continue my trip and not try to make it home for the funeral, and we talked briefly before hanging up. That night kfi gave me very simple directions to get out of her neighborhood when I left the next morning. They involved going out, and taking two rights. Obviously I had no idea what she was talking about, and I left her apartment the next morning and wandered for about an hour and a half before finally finding myself in the German colony and from there areas that I knew. I did stop for about five minutes when I heard the most incredible noises coming out of a bush near me. There were two cats under the bushes locked in a purely sonic battle, both completely rigid, ears flat, making the most hideous screaming noises that I had ever heard. Neither moved the entire five minutes that I was watching.
Eventually I made my way into the old city of Jerusalem and wandered through the markets, bargaining a bit, not really looking for anything specific, picking up a few snacks and ordering a ring from Haday for my sister-in-law. In the early afternoon I found myself by the Kotel and took some time to sit by the Western wall, say some tehilim for my grandfather and have a good cry. It was extremely cathartic. From there I bargained my way through the Arab quarter, picking up a couple of scarves and insulting certain shopkeepers with my "lowballing" prices. Apparently even bargaining requires some diplomacy, if you start by showing them what you already bought for 15 shek down the alley no one wants to play with you.
After a while I found myself in a very crowded square by a fairly unassuming looking building. Curious, I made my way inside and found myself in a very impressive church, filled with people kneeling, artwork, candles, paintings, little chapels everywhere, and eventually a large wooden ark-like thing with a massive throng standing in a line waiting to go inside and people standing outside it crying. I had absolutely no idea where I was and was waaaay too embarressed to ask anyone. When I finally made my way back outside I asked one of the tourist police in hebrew and he told me it was the church of the "kever" - which I translated into the Church of the Holy Sepulchure. I left a different entrance than I came in and found out I was indeed correct, there was the sign I had missed on the other entrance naming the place I had been in. I climbed out of the old quarter and emerged finally in east Jerusalem near the hotel we had stayed at originally. I spent a bit of time relaxing in a small park by the wall of the old city and reading a book, while rescuing my peanuts from an overly friendly puppy. My sister called me to come and meet her so I stopped in at an internet cafe to kill time and then caught up with her in time to catch a bus to her apartment in Talpiot. We spent the next couple of hours just eating, and shopping, preparing ourselves for the trip to Petra. We bought a ton of fruit and nuts and granola bars and made a bunch of sandwiches and bought giant jugs of water, then set out very short packing lists since we only had one small backpack each.
Then while she was in her last class of the evening I walked to the German colony to meet Kfi for sushi and frozen yogurt and then walked back to pick up my clean and slightly damp laundry from her aparment. She was nice enough to walk with me the twenty minutes it took to get to the bus to Talpiot - which then drove me approximately six blocks - to my sister's apartment. I managed to get off the bus one stop, and a half a block early and then wander around looking for my sister, and then once I found her managed to get lost finding the entrance to her building and instead circled the entire block looking for it. I finally made my way inside, and festooned her bed with my damp clothing and packed my own bag for Petra, before spending the rest of the evening working on my travelblog.
She stayed up the entire night and in the morning we woke up to catch the 6 am bus to the central bus station in Jerusalem.
We bundled up and made it to the station with just enough time to go through security, bag scan and a metal detector, and make it on to the 7 am bus. Not enough time to get a seat on the bus, but the bus driver sold us return tickets with a chance to sit in the aisle for the five hour drive down to Eilat. We made it without any real problems, the first half of the journey I was on the last step up in the rear of the bus and she was sitting in front of me, while I dozed and she wished she could. For the second half I camped out further in the front and passed out full length in the aisle, waking only as we passed through the checkpoint into Eilat, when a border guards very large boot landed right next to my head as he tramped through the bus looking for anything suspicious.
We got to Eilat around 11 30 or so in the morning and the first thing we did was reserve seats on the Thursday afternoon bus to Jerusalem so that we wouldn't have to sit in the aisle again, then we bought flip flops (or at least aliza did) and made our way down to the beach, stopping only to take pictures with very large fish sculptures, and buy sarongs. In our brilliance we had only packed one towel. Mainly because I didn't pack any for the entire trip. We lay out by the gently lapping, very clear blue and surprisingly cold waters of the dead sea for an hour or so, had a picnic lunch and then got our act together to cross the border. Instead what we did was wander down the boardwalk past strip mall after strip mall, non-kosher restaurant after non-kosher restaurant, looking for someone that could change our money into dinars. We found no-one but we did get a travel agent to tell us that we could do it at the border. We made our last phone calls on the cell phones that would no longer work once we crossed the border, grabbed a small pint of vodka and hailed a taxi. Of course the first taxi tried to charge us 30 or use of the meter, vowing we would find no one who would charge us a lower price. We waved him off and caught another taxi within 15 seconds that offered us 20 shek to the border.
The border was pretty much deserted with just one other couple ahead of us. We started by paying the exit tax 98.5 shek just to leave the country! "assisted" by a woman who admitted she had no idea what was going on, wasn't good at math or counting, and changed our money for us, all while chatting about the Israeli big brother show. This topic was introduced by first asking us if we had a big brother in america, Yes! my sister and I answered excitedly (both thinking "but how did she know?!" - luckily she pointed at the TV behind her before continuing the conversation and keeping us from saying something really embarressing like "he's at georgetown law now!", or indicating that we had no idea she meant the TV show.
My time on this computer is just about up, but we made it through passport control with ease, until we tried to actually walk across the border and Aliza was sent back because her stamp wasn't dark enough, and my stamp was placed in the wrong place so she had to enter the barcode manually (this guard's life was sooo hard). We did get across the border after another ten minutes or so and walked the 200 meters of no man's land - where we actually established our own country, I'm President, Aliza is VP, name TBD - and made it through the Jordanian customs/passport control with equal ease, and fewer TV references.
That's when we got to the taxi stand where they informed us the last bus to Petra had left Aqaba hours before.
And that's where I'll end this blog. I'll finish up Petra and my last week in Israel once I'm back in the States.
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Maya
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what did you think!?
Hey! I saw that you stayed at the Prima Kings... what did you think of the hotel? I have heard really great things and I am planning on staying there in May... let me know your thoughts.. sounds like a cool trip to Israel!