Sunday 9/27

The day can be summarized as making the best of many missteps & wrong turns… or at least trying to.

REALLY.

I took this picture thinking “this is how feel today”:

First on the list for the day was to get stamps for the postcards we wrote to all our friends & family.  After missing the post office twice, we decided to try to find a different one… we finally did after many dips & turns on uphill, crazy curvy roads.  Emma is now feeling nauseous.   Chris went to get postage, and comes back with postcards in hand… no stamps.  Turns out, to get 20 stamps, $100 US.  Uh, yeah.  We’ll be hand-delivering those, thanks.  Well, that was a 45-minute diversion.

We missed Elijah’s caves in Haifa because we set the GPS for Mt Carmel… and well, you know how following a GPS works out some of the time?  Well, that was all the time for us this day.  After about 15 more minutes in the car we pulled over so Emma could recover & try not to throw up after all the curves & hills (we had even moved her to the front with the AC blasting in her face).  We gave her some Dramamine and Pepto & waited.  There was a nice lookout there…

After re-grouping we found Nesser Park which proved to be a challenging hike & a pretty cool suspension bridge.

After our hike, we enjoyed some ice cream before starting our drive to Caesarea.

Caesarea proved to be really neat – we saw the theatre, where the girls danced on stage

Herod’s palace, the colosseum and other ruins:

We ate an amazing dinner at a place called Port Cafe with outstanding views of the Mediterranean.

Then it was on to the beach, or so we thought.  Finding a beach proved to be an exercise in frustration as we watched the sun get lower & lower in the sky.  When we finally found a beach open to the public, we found there was a really loud party on one side, campers on the other.  Trash everywhere.. the water looked beautiful, and we were going to try to make the most of it until we almost got run over by a crazy man in a truck, driving right next to the water…. We grabbed our stuff & left.

It was a little over an hour’s drive to Jerusalem… so we took a few deep breaths & decided to enjoy the ride, watching the bananas pass by.  I had no idea there were so many banana trees in Israel! They’re all under these nets & just right by the highways.

We watched the sun set as we drove and the moon was big and low in the sky.

As we turned off the main highway in Jerusalem, it’s like we hit a ghost-town.  No cars anywhere.  Then a couple of minutes later we see a few people walking in the street.  Then more people.  RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!  Still no cars.  They are all dressed in their black & white, men with these really long curly side-hairs (I’m sure there’s a name for that) and crazy hats.  So these are obviously the very religious Jews… something’s going on…

Now there are tons of them & they are cursing us…   Chris said it reminded him of the movie Children of the Corn.  I didn’t see that one, but it really was bizarre & pretty awful.

We  turn up a street (following GPS still) & discover we are up a very narrow, steep dead end.  Finally, some ladies who speak English tell us that all the streets are closed (mind you, none of them were marked closed or blocked off) because it is a very holy day & we are in the most religious part of town.  We need to get out of that section NOW & don’t go the way the GPS tells us to go.

So we drive out the way we came with Chris’ window open as he says, “I know, I’m sorry, We’re lost.  We’re not Jewish”… etc.

After asking directions several times & making some more wrong turns, we find a place to park just outside the walls of the Old City.  It is dark.  We are tired.  We have no idea where we are.  I just need a good cry.

We put on our backpacks & head to the gate.  (We discovered later, after consulting a map, that this was the DUNG gate.  Of course.)  There was a very nice English-speaking soldier there who gives us directions to the gate near our hostel.

After a few more wrong turns and U-turns, we find the right street, push our way through a screaming crowd, then the police let us through a gate to a passageway that leads to our hostel.

Funny word, hostel.

Let’s just say, it’s not a place we’d stay again or recommend.

So, I dropped my things in a chair, picked up my Bible, went to Psalm 121 and started reading with tears running down my face.

First impression of Jerusalem: “I want to go anywhere else but here.”…