Playing Catch-Up Part 2: Travelling
So, the last I mentioned what travelling I'd been doing, I'd been talking about Eilat. Well, there's a reason I didn't do much after that: I was on Paediatrics and enjoying it so much I didn't want to skip a day to go travelling!
I did spend the next Friday (which is the first day of the weekend here) on a bike-ride with my hosts around a town called Sderot. If that sounds at all familiar to you, it's because it's been in the news due to the frequent rockets that land there from the Gaza Strip. Not that there are any military bases there or anything. It's just about 4km from the border, so it's ...accessible. You don't notice much different about the town when you first arrive, until you notice that the bus stops are all miniature concrete bunkers, the basketball court is covered with a metre thick, reinforced, concrete roof and that whole areas of the town are deserted because the houses weren't Qassam-proof. I once saw what may have been the traces of a rocket - gouged holes in the tarmac of the road. But Michal, my hosts' daughter who works there on her National Service says that they clean them up pretty quickly. They still get hit a couple of times a week. So we went riding through the area near by for an hour or so. We were pretty close to the border, in fact we got warned off a certain road by the army, who drove up to tell us it was out of bounds. There were flowers blooming from a couple of days of rain, and I took photos.
After I finished my elective, I barely stopped moving. I went to Ra'anana the Thursday night I finished to spend the weekend with family, then on Sunday went to Jerusalem from where I was going to a wedding on Monday night. I didn't do much touristy stuff in Jerusalem. Not only had I already done it last time, but the weather was FOUL and I spent most of my time trekking from one place to another. Also, I'd had an 'incident' - when I arrived at the bus station an odd wet patch on my knee announced to me a bottle of alcohol I'd been carrying for friends to being back to Australia for me had broken. I then had to throw everything out of my bag in a desperate attempt to save my clothes from the litre of flourescent blue liquid. Fortunately the only untouched stuff was what I wear to bed and what I was wearing to the wedding! It was an awful day - that night I wandered down to a place I like to get food, which took far longer than I'd thought, and when I got there and ordered, I realised I'd left my wallet back where I was staying. Another fortunate incident - the guy said that since he'd already put the food on to cook, I may as well eat it and come back the next day. So I did.
The wedding was lovely, as was another one I'd been to the previous week. Coincidence - they both had the same band playing. I'll put up photos to compare them for you guys if you like; one was an Ashkenazi wedding and the other was Sephardi/Yeminite and there's interesting differences.
From Jerusalem I went to Tel Aviv on Tuesday to meet up with parental friends and we bought me a new overnight bag (my old one was ruined from the booze, so sad!) and we also went up one of the highest buildings in the city to admire the panorama. Then it was back to Beersheva/Meitar, where I went out to dinner with more family friends at a delicious Indian restaurant. The next day I travelled back up to Netanya to visit my elderly aunt again and her family, although not everyone turned up. She had a rest in the afternoon and I wandered down to the beach for a walk and an icecream and also got chatted to/up by a random old guy. o_O
Next day I took the train back to Beersheva and wandered around, trying to do touristy stuff. I went to the Bedouin market (interesting but disappointing in the absence of camels, although I was excited to find a place where people were selling live birds as I wandered back to the main city) and tried to find the Light Horse Memorial like any good Australian. I failed, but a family friend took me there Sunday morning, so that was ok. That same family friend actually took me to the Dead Sea that evening and although I didn't swim, it was still nice.
I was supposed to go to another family friend's house on Friday to see archeological stuff, but due to a mixup with the buses, I didn't make it. Instead I just went to see more flowers with my hosts.
And now I'm off to Paris! Literally, they just called the plane for boarding.
More later!
I did spend the next Friday (which is the first day of the weekend here) on a bike-ride with my hosts around a town called Sderot. If that sounds at all familiar to you, it's because it's been in the news due to the frequent rockets that land there from the Gaza Strip. Not that there are any military bases there or anything. It's just about 4km from the border, so it's ...accessible. You don't notice much different about the town when you first arrive, until you notice that the bus stops are all miniature concrete bunkers, the basketball court is covered with a metre thick, reinforced, concrete roof and that whole areas of the town are deserted because the houses weren't Qassam-proof. I once saw what may have been the traces of a rocket - gouged holes in the tarmac of the road. But Michal, my hosts' daughter who works there on her National Service says that they clean them up pretty quickly. They still get hit a couple of times a week. So we went riding through the area near by for an hour or so. We were pretty close to the border, in fact we got warned off a certain road by the army, who drove up to tell us it was out of bounds. There were flowers blooming from a couple of days of rain, and I took photos.
After I finished my elective, I barely stopped moving. I went to Ra'anana the Thursday night I finished to spend the weekend with family, then on Sunday went to Jerusalem from where I was going to a wedding on Monday night. I didn't do much touristy stuff in Jerusalem. Not only had I already done it last time, but the weather was FOUL and I spent most of my time trekking from one place to another. Also, I'd had an 'incident' - when I arrived at the bus station an odd wet patch on my knee announced to me a bottle of alcohol I'd been carrying for friends to being back to Australia for me had broken. I then had to throw everything out of my bag in a desperate attempt to save my clothes from the litre of flourescent blue liquid. Fortunately the only untouched stuff was what I wear to bed and what I was wearing to the wedding! It was an awful day - that night I wandered down to a place I like to get food, which took far longer than I'd thought, and when I got there and ordered, I realised I'd left my wallet back where I was staying. Another fortunate incident - the guy said that since he'd already put the food on to cook, I may as well eat it and come back the next day. So I did.
The wedding was lovely, as was another one I'd been to the previous week. Coincidence - they both had the same band playing. I'll put up photos to compare them for you guys if you like; one was an Ashkenazi wedding and the other was Sephardi/Yeminite and there's interesting differences.
From Jerusalem I went to Tel Aviv on Tuesday to meet up with parental friends and we bought me a new overnight bag (my old one was ruined from the booze, so sad!) and we also went up one of the highest buildings in the city to admire the panorama. Then it was back to Beersheva/Meitar, where I went out to dinner with more family friends at a delicious Indian restaurant. The next day I travelled back up to Netanya to visit my elderly aunt again and her family, although not everyone turned up. She had a rest in the afternoon and I wandered down to the beach for a walk and an icecream and also got chatted to/up by a random old guy. o_O
Next day I took the train back to Beersheva and wandered around, trying to do touristy stuff. I went to the Bedouin market (interesting but disappointing in the absence of camels, although I was excited to find a place where people were selling live birds as I wandered back to the main city) and tried to find the Light Horse Memorial like any good Australian. I failed, but a family friend took me there Sunday morning, so that was ok. That same family friend actually took me to the Dead Sea that evening and although I didn't swim, it was still nice.
I was supposed to go to another family friend's house on Friday to see archeological stuff, but due to a mixup with the buses, I didn't make it. Instead I just went to see more flowers with my hosts.
And now I'm off to Paris! Literally, they just called the plane for boarding.
More later!