Jerusalem: The Western Wall, the Old City

Jerusalem O Jerusalem

Israel: The Dead Sea and Masada

Dead Sea and Masada

Israel

Israel

Tel Aviv

I got into Tel Aviv yesterday around sundown --- the flight was an hour late due to heavy security air traffic in Israel, so we were told. At Passport Control I tried to look as American as possible (something I’d been doing the opposite of for the last month) and asked for the entry stamp on something other than my passport --- an Israeli stamp in your passport will automatically deny you entry into several countries (Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen) and may be problematic in several more (Bahrain and Oman are both on the “maybe” list) --- which the passport official agreed to after a semi-terse line of interrogation: Why? What are the names of your father and mother? (I answered slowly Philip and Dea – at which point raised eyebrows furrowed a bit, trying to figure out what kind of name that was, and I added brightly “It’s Irish!” which I figured was a better explanation than “It’s a long story!”)

The two women smiled and looked satisfied at the Irish thing, and one kept telling me my last name looked French – I shrugged and said again “It’s German”and then trying to be conversational said, “Well, there’s that one French opera with a similar name” at which point I realized my passport had been sitting there on the counter for a while and said “I’m all done?” and took off, relieved to have escaped the stamp. They handed me a piece of paper with a stamp on it, which said “Gate Entry Pass” and when I handed it to the woman guarding baggage claim, she took it and tore it up. So I have no proof of entering Israel right now which I find somewhat worrisome and hope I am not too much harassed on my way out—though need not think about it for the next week or so.

Anyway, tales and photos of the Nile and Istanbul to come. In the meantime, a few shots I took today around Tel Aviv. I rented a bike and rode along the Mediterranean to the Port of Tel Aviv and then headed inland, east along the Yarkon River --- a gorgeous ride.

Tel Aviv bicycling

Istanbul

Istanbul Day 1

Stay Tuned . . .

For photos of magnificent temples along the Nile River and for accounts of Istanbul---the only city in the world on two continents---where I am now, and loving it.

Along the Nile

The Nile: Aswan to Edfu

Captioned . . .

The Pyramids Album has now been captioned. (Or semi-captioned, at least.) Happy viewing!

Pyramids!

Pyramids!

Transit and the Transitory

From Alexandria we traveled by train to Cairo, where we spent New Year's Eve and Day, and parts of the day before and the day after. On the train, I was seated next to an Egyptian woman, and after about half an hour of reviewing the "Making Conversation" part of both the Modern Standard and Egyptian Arabic sections of the phrasebook (as she glanced over my shoulder), I worked up the courage to start a conversation in Arabic --- which she graciously tolerated for about four sentences before switching to English. She, a Cairo university instructor, was overwhelmingly kind and when she learned that I'd be traveling on my own for a bit, she gave me her number in case of need --- and an hour's conversation later, when it was time to detrain, extended it into an earnest invitation to come eat Egyptian food and meet her 13 year old daughter. It made my day, this kindness of a stranger, and I'm hoping it might be able to work out the night I have a layover in Cairo, before flying to Aswan to take a 5 day boat trip on the Nile.

Tim and Katy and I spent our days in Cairo and outlying areas peering into pyramids and wandering around museum galleries, mostly, but we also traversed on foot and by car several parts of the city, including some town squares and the row of embassies and the neighborhoods of a couple universities, which put us not far from some of the things described here:

www.nytimes.com/2009/01/03/world/middleeast/03egypt.html?_r=1&hp

And now it's back to work, which is very refreshing after days of not being able to because I lacked internet access (by the way, the Google blog allows you to put whatever date you want on the post, so I've been backdating a few entries previously written in Word to make them appear chronologically in the blog).

Onward . . .

Conundrum at the Red Sea: To work or to play today?

So I am pondering the lifelong dilemma: work first or play first? I’m in a spacious room at a beachfront hotel along the Red Sea Coast and it is gorgeous out there --- I took a stroll along the sand after breakfast --- but sun worshiping tends to be a bit of a soporific and it’s far too early in the day to lose ambition. So I think I will at least start with the internet research, and then perhaps take a printout of it to the shore --- seems like a healthy compromise. Internet is a bit much of a racket here but there is not a whole lot of choice. Also, it’s really slow because a couple weeks ago some ship dropped anchor at a bad spot in the Mediterranean, destroying 3 of the 4 undersea internet cables that service the Middle East.


And one final internet dilemma: the wireless functions less often than more, and the DSL cable that is the best hope for a steady connection is on the opposite side of the room from the desk. So the only place to work on my laptop is sitting up on the bed, which is fine at night but makes me feel like an invalid during the other times of the day. So I just put the “Privacy Please” sign up and am toying with the idea of rearranging some of the furniture in the room so that I can work with the internet in a sitting-up-normal-in-a-chair-at-a-desk position. Hmmmm . . . . muahahahah.