Blading in Tel Aviv
Kurt and David tell me that every Tuesday night at 1030p in Tel Aviv, a ton of rollerbladers go out. This sounds fun. Kurt lends me his blades while he is out of town in Germany. Matteo, David and I meet up at the square where all the bladers are meeting. I'm thinking there is going to be around 50 or so. More like 200! The leaders tell us about the course we will take, all in Hebrew. Luckily I have Matteo as my translator. Thanks Matteo! We take off right after the course is discribed and the basics covered. We head straight into the street. We take up the whole 2 lanes of traffic. So great!

Whoa! Man down. Only a few blocks into it. I almost ate it. Close one. We continue on. We are heading north and then cross the freeway over the bridge. Now we are in the neighboring city of Tel Aviv just north of the city. This is about when Matteo needs a little break. By the time we finish our break, the bladers are gone. By now, we've been going for an hour straight. We head back. Ahhhhh...this hill is way to steap with no real brakes on these blades. Wham! I go down trying to stop myself on a rail/fence thing. Butt hurts a bit. Minor scrap on my left hand. My back though felt like a twisted a bungee cord up and let it go. After we get to the car, Matteo drives me to the shuttle to grab one back to Jerusalem. It only costs $15 USD from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This was totally worth it.

The golden dome
I've been looking at this dome for the last 2.5 weeks from afar. I can see it from the Dan Boutique Hotel deck too. Just yesterday I found out from Malcom that you can go up to it. So I get up at 6:30 to make it down to the old city one last time. I meet Malcom around 7a. This only guy in front of us tells us about his travel through a Palestinian city where some famous biblical person is buried.




They let us in right at 730a. The place is so quiet. Hardly anyone around. I immediately notice the drastic difference between the old city I just left a minute ago and this space, which is still a part of the old city. Slow pace. No vendors. A short stroll from the entrance and there it is in front of me. The Dome of the Rock, up close and personal. There is such a great sense of peace. I want to sit here for hours. The dome is made of real gold, donated by someone from Egypt.

A close look at the tile work reveals the detailing put into the exterior of the building. Walking around the building I find the entrance. Now if I could only pull off that I'm Muslim so I can sneak a peak inside. You can only enter the the mosque if you are a Muslim.


Time to go to work. I head out around 830a. I know I have about a 30 minute walk ahead of me to get to Animation Lab.

After 850 steps

After climbing for 30-40 minutes, we run out of stairs. A small u-turn to the right from the stairway and then the monestary is standing if front of us. It's huge! This is bigger than the treasury. How did they do this? So much detail and no room for mistakes.



We start to head back down from the monestary. Looking in the far distance, I can make out where we started in the valley after the treasury.



This bedoine girl is about to setup shop with her mom along the stairway up to the monestary.




The last thing to see before we head out. The pathway we started on 6 hours ago is below our feet again. I thought his was a big highlight when we started. Now it looks so small compared to what we have seen.

The big reveal.

Our guide puts his hat on a little carved rock in the wall. "Stare at this rock. It's a magic rock. Now back up while staring at this rock." We take steps backward slowly. Eight or so steps later, "Now turn to your left". This is what we see after walking down this narrow passage for the last half hour....
This is the 'Treasury'. It became famous in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.











Check out the amazing preserved detailing.







You can get a sense of scale here. It's about 5 stories, maybe 6, tall. The little black figure on the stairs, in the middle, is a person.

A carving or two.

Here you can see a human with the bottom part of camel legs with the body above the gap. My head comes up to about the human's thighs.

Yoshi and I are doing a prayer to a carving on the opposite wall before we head furuther.

The last picture, their is a channel on the right side. The channel collected water from where we entered the valley all the way into the main part of the city. Ingenious.

Scale please.

It helps to see people next to the rocks.






Here we see a fish carved from the rock.






Or...is it an elphant after walking a few more steps?





The rocks are turning more red now.

Petra.....as big as Paris?? Wow!

Our tour guide meets us at 6am promptly at our hotel. The sun is barely peaking out as we walk 5 minutes to the entrance of Petra.

Only 5 more minutes and we see our first carving in the side of a mountain getting touched with the sun's rays. Our guide says that Petra is like a woman, she changes her dress 5 times a day. Petra does it with the sun. We are heading into the tall walled city.

At most of the places, the walkway is only 10 feet wide but 5 stories tall.

Let's check out the entrance to Petra – the old one.

Leaving the hotel, we arrive at the gate to Petra only 3 minutes later. It's closes at 6p. It's 620p. Oh well....we are going tomorrow. It would have been nice to see the sunset on the city. We go to the tourist office. The guy hooks us up with a guide that will meet us at our hotel at 6am. The park opens at 7am. If you have a guide, you can get in earlier. Great! This will be 1 extra hour we don't have to bake in the sun later. Everyone says...the earlier the better because of the sun and heat.

Movenpick

Only 15 minutes down the road, the driver drops us off at the Movenpick Hotel. They have a metal detector and x-ray machine too. I'm getting accustomed to this now. The hotel is amazing. It doesn't reflect at all the surrounding area. It's a 5 star hotel sitting near decent buildings of Petra. The room is great. Even has a nice plate of chocolates waiting for us.

Authentic local food

We stop at a small diner that has 3 or 4 tables. It's a turkish place. We order the kabobs. It comes with thin quesedilla type things with red sauce spread on it. We also have a bowel of red stuff and humus. I watch the driver for a lead on what to do with the thin bread....he's using it to put his food in it and sometimes just dipping into the red sauce or the humus. We follow suite. All very good.

Jordanian border to Petra

On the way, we try to talk to our driver on details of coming back with him. He knows small bit of English, some more German, and Arabic. Great.....”Yoshi, you know any German?” “No.” We work out a deal to go back for $45. On the way up to Petra, the landscape is light brown and hilly with mountains in the distance and sometimes close to the road with the same coloring. We see bedouins (somewhat nomadic people of the area), camels, goats, and the occasional person in the middle of no where waiting for a bus, I think. It's wild seeing camels crossing the road where the taxi driver needs to slow down and wait for them to move. We ask the driver is he can stop somewhere for lunch. He doesn't understand. We drive into the city of Petra about 2 hours from the time we left the border and bring up lunch again. This time is more like: “eat (gesturing eating and chewing)....food.....hungry” Ah...he understands now.

Taxi time

Where's the taxis? Oh here comes one from the shaded area by the palm trees. “Taxi? Where you going?” “Petra, how much?” “65” Everyone told us to deal with the taxi drivers.... “How about 35?” “60”, he says back. “40” I say. “55, about 27 each”. Hmmm...can we get a better deal? We hesitate, others told us it could cost anywhere from 35 to 100. “ok, we'll do it.”. Just as we finish the dealing, the couple rolls up in the mercedes. The other driver that came with the first car says, “you need a taxi” to them. “We are going to go with them” the guy says from Jerusalem. “Is that cool we all go in 1 car?” “NO! They can't come...just 2.” The guy from Jerusalem starts getting pissed and starts saying things back to the 2 drivers and the Mercedes driver. This whole time, Yoshi, the California girl, and I are just watching this who thing. What it's coming down to is that none of the drivers want to deal with the Israeli. Before this gets too heated and the possibility of loosing our taxi deal, Yoshi and I hop in our cab and drive off. Up to this point, I've heard about the Israeli/arab differences....but now I've seen it first hand. Wow.We drive about 10 minutes into a neighborhood near Acaba. The taxi stops and we switch taxis.

Luckily Michael told us this would happen or this would have been really weird....not that it isn't weird. I guess this is how they work trips to Petra. Now we are on our way.