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JEWISH ELF. . .
BACK IN THE BIG APPLE. . .
. . .wake up early in the morning in Athens, Greece, where the ship docked, and by the evening Brandon and I were back in the old U.S. of A.
7 hour difference in time, and both of us were exhausted, especially Brandon who had to carry our four pieces of luggage up 40 steps, 2 flights of stairs, to his apartment. After all the traveling I have done,you would think I would know how to pack light, but I usually return home with an extra suitcase, and this trip is no exception.
Went to bed early, but both of us were wide awake by 4 am the next morning. Seeing as it's New York, and New York never sleeps, we decided to bite the bullet, get dressed and go out to breakfast. Refueled and roaring to go, the rest of the city was just waking up, but I went back to bed and tried to get some more sleep. Poor Brandon had to go to work, and with the time change, that makes for a very long day.
Decided to be a tourist in the afternoon, and went uptown. I'm an uptown kinda gal, and there no better place to feel like you are in New York City than to go to Times Square. My favorite hotel in the world is right in the middle of all the commotion, the Marriott Marquis. If I wasn't staying with Brandon, then my one and only choice would be this hotel. Yes, it's expensive, over $300 a night, but it's all about location, location, location. The rooms are large, the staff is very friendly, and breakfast in the restaurant is always a treat.
Standing outside the hotel can be a nightmare with all the traffic and people going in all directions, but I love being in the middle of it all. Nothing is better than being in Times Square, looking at all the huge billboards advertising Broadway shows, and walking into the souvenir shops filled with I HEART NYC.
Never fear New York, I shall return, and soon.
EGYPT. . .ALEXANDRIA. . .
. . .Both Brandon and I were still emotionally drained after a very long 15- hour tour yesterday, and the thought of getting on another bus was more than either of us could handle. Before coming on the cruise I had booked and paid for all our tours, and the ones in Egypt were very expensive, but we agreed to stay on the ship and relax, seeing as we only had two more days before our holiday was over. Basically I through away $400 on the tour that we didn't take. YIKES!!!!
After breakfast, Brandon decided that we should walk around Alexandria, and check out the city, and see if it might be better than Cairo. Although I would have preferred to avoid another ugly, crowded city, I decided to be a good sport and go with him.
Within 10 minutes of walking away from the port, we were once again beseiged with merchants begging us to go inside their stores and shop.
We thought we were going in the direction of the bazaar, but instead we found ourselves in the marketplace. I love taking pictures of fruits and vegetables, and I was in my glory.
Brandon and I were the only "foreigners" in sight, and for once, no one even tried to talk to us. Since we looked like we belonged to the cruise ship, no one thought we were going to buy anything, and we were able to walk along in peace and quiet.
I saw vegetables that I had never seen before, and no one cared, except for my son, whether I was taking pictures of them. One man even asked me to take his picture, and it's my favorite shot of the entire trip. The other picture that I love is of a woman sitting on the ground with her lettuce and vegetables piled all around her.
Once we walked out of the market area, we decided we had enough, and walked straight back to the ship.
EGYPT. . .CAIRO. . .
. . .the Pyramids and the Sphinx are located on the Giza side of Cairo, and now we moved to the actual city side of Cairo.
Ibn Tulun Mosque, built from 870 to 879 AD, is the oldest mosque in Egypt that has survived mostly in its original form.
Many biblical legends are attached to the location of this mosque: it is said to be the landing site of Noah's Ark, the place where Moses confronted the Pharaoh's magicians, and the place where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac.
The entire complex of the mosque is surrounded by a wall and covers more than 6 acres, thus being the third largest in the world. The arches of the courtyard galleries are decorated with beautifully carved stucco, the first time this medium was used in Cairo. The minaret is the only one of its kind in Egypt, with a spiral staircase around the outside. The Spanish influence to architecture can be seen in the horseshoe arches of the minaret windows and else where around the mosque.
Adjacent to the mosque is the Gayer-Anderson Museum, originally a house belonging to R.G. Gayer-Anderson, an English doctor who worked for the Egyptian government.
A lover of Egyptian culture, Gayer-Anderson collected many different items from various historical periods and filled the house with his collection of Oriental furniture, glassware, crystal, carpets, silks, and embroidered Arab costumes. He also collected beautiful furniture and works of art from Turkey, Persia, Syria, and other Oriental locations.
When Gayer-Anderson died he left his home to the Egyptian government and in 1937 it was made into a museum.
Our last stop was at the Khan El Khalili market, and it was Friday afternoon. Wall to wall people shopping for everything under the sun, and this should have been a shopper's dream come true, but once again, I was deprived of enjoying myself.
Walking through the market was claustophobic, with a narrow thoroughfare between shops. Every, and I mean EVERY, shop keeper pursued us relentlessly, even pushing merchandise into our chests, and begging us to buy. Rather than look through the shops, I walked straight ahead, and tried to ignore the persistent merchants.
At one point a security guard, with a gun in his back pocket, covered by his jacket, offered to walk with us in order to protect us from the hoard of beggers.
Truthfully, someone needs to explain to these merchants that the hard sell only pushes customers away. Brandon really couldn't tolerate the commotion, and was totally disgusted by the masses of people, the poverty,and the filth all around him.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY. . .EGYPT
. . .the good refers to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, the bad refers to 22 million people who live in Cairo, and the ugly refers to the sewage, filth, smell, and desolation of the city. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to see the magnificent Pyramids and Sphinx, but I will NEVER return to Egypt again.
A baby is born every 24 seconds in Egypt, and there are many people who live on top of a huge cemetery in the center of Cairo. Totally disgusting, yet worth a once-in-a-lifetime visit.
The ride from the Port of Said to Cairo was 3 hours in each direction, and by the time we returned to the ship not one of us on the tour were sad to leave behind an emotionally exhausting day.
Not much to see during the bus ride until we arrived in Cairo, but already it was obvious that there was much to see in only one day.
The Pyramids and the Sphinx of Giza.
Lunch on the Nile in a falluca.
JERUSALEM. . .ISRAEL. . .
. . .too religious for Brandon, too many sites for me. Seeing a city almost every day, and getting up early for a tour, is exhausting. Never thought that cruising would be so much work!
Jerusalem is a city that goes back to the 4th millennium BCE, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism, contains a number of significant Christian sites, and is considered the third holiest city for people worshipping Islam.
The first site on the tour was of Yad Vashem, the world's most important memorial for the victims of the Holocaust. The name means "A Hand and a Name", and it implies that every victim will be individually remembered.
The tree-lined Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations commemorates and honors non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews.
Although there are many parts to this museum, the most fascinating to me was the Children's Memorial, a dark underground chamber, where names from the list of 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust are constantly read out.
"And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (a yad vashem). . .that shall not be cut off." Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 5
Pillar of Heroism
Eternal flame in the Hall of Remembrance
The gentleman in the above sculpture was a priest in Poland. During the war he hid many children, and when the Nazis sent the children to the gas chamber, he went along to protect the children until the very last moment of their lives.
The Israel museum is the largest museum in Israel. The most important collection within the museum is the "Shrine of the Book", where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept, but unfortunately that section was being renovated. In another section was a large scale model of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period. This is a 1:50 scale model of Jerusalem as it is believed to have looked in the days of the Second Temple.
Lunch break at the Olive Tree Hotel was delicious, and then on to more sites in the afternoon.
King David's Tomb is one of the most sacred sites visited by people of the Jewish faith in Jerusalem. The massive stone sarcophagus is draped in a red cloth with the Star of David on it, and above is placed 22 crowns of the Torah in solid silver, to signify those that succeeded each other after King David on the throne of Israel.
Rachel's Tomb has been a place of pilgrimage for Jews, especially Jewish women unable to give birth. According to the Bible, Rachel, wife of Jacob, went into a difficult labor with her second son, Benjamin. She died during childbirth.
Jewish tradition teaches that Rachel weeps for her children and that when the Jews were taken into exile, she wept as they passed by her grave on the way to Babylonia.
The tomb is covered with a curtain made from the gown of Nava Applebaum, a young Israeli woman who was killed by Palestinian terrorists in a suicide bombing at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem on the eve of her wedding.
Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock in the distance.
The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, is located at the bottom of Temple Mount. The Western Wall, constructed of massive rough blocks of golden stone, is a remnant of the outer retaining walls of the Second Temple as constructed by Herod in 30 BC. The Wall is the holiest place of prayer for the Jewish people.
In customary, or Orthodox, Judiasm, men and women do not pray next to one another. This is the women's side of the Wailing Wall. It is the tradition to write a pray on a small piece of paper, fold it up, and place it in the cracks between the bricks of the wall where God will see it and respond.
On March 26, 2000, Pope John Paul II placed a letter in the wall, in July 2008, before becoming the President of the United States, Barack Obama placed a written prayer in the wall, and in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI also deposited a message in the wall.
More than a million notes are placed each year between the crevices of the wall. The notes are collected twice a year and buried on the Mount of Olives.
When I visited Jerusalem in 1975, I placed a message in the wall, and it was answered. I returned to the wall today, and that was the prayer that I requested. Maybe my new prayers will be answered because I left another note, with a different, more important message. Only time will tell. . .
The men's side on the left, separated by a fence, the women's side on the right.
HAIFA. . .ISRAEL. . .PART 2. . .
. . .the second part of the tour in Haifa was actually to another nearby town, Acre. Visited the Templars Tunnel, a tunnel that was discovered by chance in 1994, after a woman in a nearby apartment complained about a blocked sewer. During the second half of the 12th century, the members of the Templar Order began to build their quarter in Acre The Templars were a military-monastic order that took care of pilgrims and patients who came from Europe to the land of Israel in order to visit the holy places. Working on behalf of the pope, they first settled in Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount, hence the name Templars, or guards of the Temple. After the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, they settled in Acre. At the western end of the tunnel, the central fortress of the Order was built. The Templar fortress was the strongest building in the city, and the major part of it abuts the shoreline.
These paintings look 3-dimensional, but when you get right up to them, they are flat paintings. Amazing!
After the tour, Brandon and I met my cousin Sonia who lives in Haifa. She took us to a shopping mall where we walked around, and then ate dinner. I hadn't seen my cousin for 5 years, so it was great to have a chance to be with her again.
