The coffee seller in Bethlehem let Julie give it a try before we left the city early that day...
The only beer made in Palestine, "Taybeh." It is mmmm mmm good. Our international group of friends (we had people from Argentina, China, Norway, the States, Canada AND Uruguay) we had gathered soon dispersed as we left Bethlehem on Christmas day. Out of the group I ended up sticking with my friend Casey who is also from Oregon and had been studying abroad in Amman as well but on a different program. We decided to head back to Jerusalem for a night and then explore the West Bank.
First night was spent in Palestine's capital, Ramallah. In Israel and Palestine there were so many more local fruits and veggies available than in Jordan (hint: water).
After Ramallah we headed north and briefly stopped in Nablus. There were no other travelers in sight, not surprisingly, so we got a lot of stares but had fun wandering around the old city back alleys.
Ridiculously filling lunch in Nablus for not too many Shekels.
That evening we decided to head straight to Haifa where we had plans to stay at a couchsurfers house. Re-entering Israel proper was a little stressful and involved taking a shared taxi from Nablus to Jenin, then we had to pay for a private taxi from Jenin to the border-crossing in another nearby town, and THEN we had some trouble getting through the border (they thoroughly searched our bags as we waited in an isolated room), but after finally getting approval to cross into Israel proper again we realized that we had to pay for another pricey private taxi to get to the nearest bus station in a town called Al-Fula. Finally from Al-Fula we hopped on a bus to Haifa where we luckily found our host's house without much trouble.
The view from our host's balcony the next morning was a nice reward for the exhausting evening we had the night before...
Same view but at night... Haifa is the 3rd largest city in Israel and has the largest port.
The next day we mainly spent time exploring a beach outside of town on the beautiful Mediterranean.
The above five pictures were taken one morning when our host in Haifa gave us the wonderful idea of hiking down a Wadi (canyon) from the high hillside his home is perched on straight down to the Sea. Beautiful!
Akko. A small, dominantly Arab, fishing village just north of Haifa.
Exploring Old Akko
New and Old Haifa
View of "Jesus' Playground"(quoted from the pastor of a large group of American Christian tourists who happened to be perched up on top of the hill with us) from a small Druze village east of Haifa.
It was windy.
We celebrated New Years in Tel Aviv. Overall it reminded me of a smaller (much smaller) L.A. Really beautiful in some ways, but expensive and a sort of stressful city to hang around.
After a long journey around the Holy Land we headed back to Jerusalem for one night before Casey and I had to part ways. She was to stay in Israel but head south where she would start an internship in the bedouin village of Rahat in the Negev Desert working with a local Women's empowerment organization. I was to head back to the Allenby/King Hussein border crossing alone to recoup from the extensive travels for a few days before beginning my own internship at Ruwwad, the Arab foundation for sustainable development in the poor neighborhood of Jabal Natheef.
Currently back in Amman. The above pictures were taken from the roof of the house I am currently living in. Picture in the middle of one of my adorable neighbor friends.
More to come soon!
Sending lots of love,
Elise
love your pictures of akko! towards the end of the trip, daniel and i were looking for a small fishing village just like that, but ohhhh of course it was shabbat so we never found one.
ReplyDelete~victoria
i was reading though your blog and looking at all the pretty pictures and just thinking... wait a minute, a lot of these pictures look very very familiar.. haha.
ReplyDelete"At the southern edge of the Bering sea lies a river and a village called Egegik. The river follows a winding course down out of the volcanic mountains of the interior to merge with the sea in a wide and muddy bay." Keep up the great writing kiddo TG
ReplyDeletewhat the heck is shabbat?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the word? Are you hunkered down or out and about? What's the street say?
ReplyDeleteMike Girouard
Uncle Mike! Hunkered down I most certainly am not. I'm back in Amman for the most part but still adventuring around on a pretty regular basis. Things over in these parts have definitely gotten even more interesting than they were upon my arrival in September... I'm working on a blog update soon so you'll hear more about everything then :) I was happy to hear about the time that Tay and friends got to spend with you in the big glory state of TEXAS (and everyone knows about Texas here...). Hope all is well!
ReplyDeletelove,
Elise