Part I
I just spent two weeks (plus an extra day, haha) hanging out with Lauren S., a friend since elementary school.
Her bags were a couple days late in arriving, so we hung out in Tel Aviv until they did. One of her friends is really into sport bikes, so we took some photos with some just for fun:
Her bags arrived at 11 pm on Tuesday, with a little note from El Al attached that said, "All's well that ends well." Isn't that obnoxious? What if she had all her meds in that lost bag and she died while waiting for them?
Anyway, baggage in hand, we decided to get out of Tel Aviv. Wednesday we spent the whole day walking around Jerusalem. We decided to go to the Tower of David museum, because we figured museum meant an air-conditioned room. Nope, this museum entailed walking the walls of the old city in the scorching sun:
After walking around the whole day, we went to a street festival on Ben Yehuda street, where we met Zach who was also staying at our hostel:
Late that night we were hanging out at the hostel talking about what we were going to do during her trip. Originally, Lauren and I had discussed going to Sinai, but the bombing in Sharm el Sheik that happened the day before she came out put a damper on those plans.
At 2 am in the morning, nothing seems like a bad idea, though, and we made the decision to go to Dahab, in Sinai, for a couple of days starting that next morning. Unwisely, I had told Lauren to leave her passport in my apt. in Tel Aviv (about an hour away), and to have enough time in Sinai we really needed to leave early that morning.
So, I left for Tel Aviv at 5 am (we didn't go to sleep that night) where I picked up her passport and then caught the next bus back to Jerusalem. From there it was a four and a half hour trip to Eilat, right on the border with Sinai.
I wanted to rest my head on the window to sleep, but some Israeli's hairy feet were in my way.
At Eilat we had a little action in the bus station. There was an abandoned suitcase. The station was evacuated and we all had to go stand outside while they blew it up. That was an hour delay. Here is the crowd all standing around near the suitcase. That crowd is about 200 ft away from the suitcase, we stood further back.
For the record, it was really *(&8&*( hot in Eilat.
Next up, Egypt!
Her bags were a couple days late in arriving, so we hung out in Tel Aviv until they did. One of her friends is really into sport bikes, so we took some photos with some just for fun:
Her bags arrived at 11 pm on Tuesday, with a little note from El Al attached that said, "All's well that ends well." Isn't that obnoxious? What if she had all her meds in that lost bag and she died while waiting for them?
Anyway, baggage in hand, we decided to get out of Tel Aviv. Wednesday we spent the whole day walking around Jerusalem. We decided to go to the Tower of David museum, because we figured museum meant an air-conditioned room. Nope, this museum entailed walking the walls of the old city in the scorching sun:
After walking around the whole day, we went to a street festival on Ben Yehuda street, where we met Zach who was also staying at our hostel:
Late that night we were hanging out at the hostel talking about what we were going to do during her trip. Originally, Lauren and I had discussed going to Sinai, but the bombing in Sharm el Sheik that happened the day before she came out put a damper on those plans.
At 2 am in the morning, nothing seems like a bad idea, though, and we made the decision to go to Dahab, in Sinai, for a couple of days starting that next morning. Unwisely, I had told Lauren to leave her passport in my apt. in Tel Aviv (about an hour away), and to have enough time in Sinai we really needed to leave early that morning.
So, I left for Tel Aviv at 5 am (we didn't go to sleep that night) where I picked up her passport and then caught the next bus back to Jerusalem. From there it was a four and a half hour trip to Eilat, right on the border with Sinai.
I wanted to rest my head on the window to sleep, but some Israeli's hairy feet were in my way.
At Eilat we had a little action in the bus station. There was an abandoned suitcase. The station was evacuated and we all had to go stand outside while they blew it up. That was an hour delay. Here is the crowd all standing around near the suitcase. That crowd is about 200 ft away from the suitcase, we stood further back.
For the record, it was really *(&8&*( hot in Eilat.
Next up, Egypt!
posted by rachel at 3:08 AM
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