A Garden & A Bunch of Rocks

Part 2 of filling in the gap.

After getting back from Istanbul LATE Monday night (Tuesday morning class was productive...), we took it easy the next weekend.  Friday (November 5th) we took a little daytime outing to the Baha'i Gardens!!!!!!

Againnn, siiigh.  Actually remember this was actually the first time, my visit with Anna was the second time, so this one was much more exciting.  JK, I don't want to get in trouble...

Since I already touched on the Baha'i Gardens I'll be brief, although one thing that was cool about this was that we showed up during an actual tour, which allows you to walk down the top 9 terraces, in the actual Gardens.  You can see the top 9 terraces here...  (the somewhat hard to see, canvas covered structure in the middle of the picture is where the gold dome is supposed to be... closed for rennovation, booooooo.  The other 9 terraces continue after the dome, you can't see them in the picture).

The tour was free, as is entrance, because the Baha'i faith is run completely on donations, but only donations from Baha'i, so we aren't even ALLOWED TO PAY... awesome!!!  I love the Baha'i.

The Baha'i is a very nice faith actually... the are very peaceful and they love everybody.  Actually that's pretty much true, they believe in all the prophets from all the religions, so nobody is really "wrong", and they actively try to avoid conflict.  Baha'is from all over the world come to volunteer at the gardens, but none actually live here because they do not want to stir the pot by adding another religion to the tense mixture... I think that was pretty much the explanation.  Anyway it all sounded very nice, and I can see why they are so peaceful if they all just come to these Gardens and listen to the running water and look at the pretty plants, I know I just wanted to take a nap on the grass.

We are not allowed in the archives, but they still look cool.

Does this scene look familiar??  It's almost like deja vu... I can't put my finger on it... it's almost like... 2 posts ago... or something... ahh I can't put my finger on it.

Anyway if you want more pretty gardens, the rest of these aren't up yet but all of the pictures from when Anna and I went are in the album of her visit.

Mooooovin on.

The rest of the weekend was quiet.  If you don't really plan ahead it is easy to get stuck around campus / nearby because the busses stop from Friday mid afternoon until Saturday night / Sunday.  Shabbat.  The cruelest trick in Israel, you wait all week for the weekend, then weekend comes... and you can't get anywhere!!!  I guess we manage... but still...

So one weekend of rest was enough we decided, so next Thursday (the 11th), Dan and I hopped on a bus from Haifa to Eilat, just for kicks.

I won't include a map, but Haifa is almost as far north on the coast as you can get, and Eilat is in the southernmost tip on the gulf.  6 hours on the bus.  Good weekend plan right?

Upon arriving we took a short taxi to the Yitzhak Rabin crossing and walked into Jordan!!  The border crossing is a peculiar experience.  It seems like it should be a tense experience, and in some ways it is.  Barbed wire.  Machine guns.  A weird walk through purgatory as you cross in between the two countries on foot with nobody around and just a fenced in path.  At the same time it is strangely casual though.  One of the guys with a machine gun was wearing a striped polo shirt (was he supposed to be there??).  The Jordanians joked with us and made fun of us etc.  The checkin seemed kind of haphazard... I don't really know what to think.  All I can say is that it makes a big difference that the two countries have a formal peace between them... cause it's either that experience or the one you get on the other borders (Lebanon, Syria) where, you know, you get arrested / sent back.  I take my wins where I get them.

From the border we took a 2 hour taxi to Petra, which was our ultimate destination for the weekend.  Petra is a popular destination from Israel, even more so after it was put on the new list of the 7 wonders of the world.  Very exciting.

Basically it is the remains of an ancient city that used to be a big trade hub back in the day... but the cool part is, the city was naturally hidden by a giant, long, narrow split in a mountain, and the city consists of facades and rooms carved out of the side of the cliffs.  Soooo cool.

Dan and I went down on Thursday, but Mike and Jon had to meet us the next day because of their classes.  The benefit of going down on Thursday was that we got to catch the last showing of the weekend of Petra By Night.  Petra By Night is when they set up little bag candles all along the walk through the canyon and into the opening at the end in front of one of the main buildings, called the Treasury.

Walk in.

This was the scene when we arrived at the Treasury.

Once here everyone sits down, gets really quiet, and the Bedouins bring you tea and play some music on their traditional instruments, and sing a song or two.  Did I mention... sooo cooooll???

Plus, also included in this trip is the

You look around, see the sand, candle lit stone facade, Bedouin music, eerie silence, stone cliffs, look up to the night sky, back to the sand, Holy &$%! I'm sitting in the middle of the desert in the middle of Jordan!!!!!!

moment.

Friday, we returned.. this time, Petra By Day.  I just made that up.  It's just normal Petra.

Here is the very same Treasury, by day.  If anyone has seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will recognize it from about 45 seconds of footage in the ending scenes.  The people here LOVE THAT. They are obsessed.  I hadn't seen the movie but our hostel showed it at night.  They have a "vote" every evening on what to watch.  Guess what is always watched.

We found Jordanians to be very nice.  Every night our hostel made us an all you can eat buffet.... um... favorite hostel ever?  Quite possible.  They know the way to my heart.

Roman theater... but carved out of a cliff!

Urn tomb... carved out of a cliff!

These things are everywhereee.  Hundreds.  Dan and I took a little side hike, detour thing.  We asked some guide for directions, and he told us where to go, and mentioned we could take the side hike as an alternate way back.

Guide: Ya you can check it out if you want.  Just make sure you have plenty of water... tourists tend to get lost up there, but you guys look young and fit.


As Dan likes to point out, we focused more on the "young and fit" and less on the, "people get lost up there".

We also had about a liter of water between us.

Hmmm..

Of course we went.  We were having trouble finding the entrance, and I jokingly pointed out some sort of rocky ledge.  We tried it out and it actually kind of worked... which should have been a bad sign, but at the time, it seemed ok...

I wouldn't say we got lost per say... but we did scramble all over rocks without much idea of where we were going, with the constant, "well we can just check over here", mentality digging us further and further into our hole of doom.  For over an hour...

On the plus side, we saw all sorts of cool formations off the beaten path from where all the tourists go... those little carved houses in the side of the mountains are eeeeverywhere!!!

So obviously we didn't die, but we almost did.  Totally.  It was intense.  We made it out on our last sips of water and drops of hope.  Enough drama.

Besides the Treasury, the other highlight is to do the 800 (time consuming) steps up to the Monastery, which is enormous and also awesome.

And we went to the "Best View in Petra" sign to look out over Wadi Arabia.

The next day we did a little more Petra stuff, but not too much, the one full long day took care of most of it, and you can only hear / see so many rocks in one blog entry.

Another highlight was the election of a political candidate in Wadi Musa (the town you stay in when you visit Petra) while we were there.  Dan and I were very disappointed that we missed the celebration, but Jon and Mike were able to stop by while we were doing some additional sightseeing.  To celebrate, they killed 10 camels and a lot more goats and made a feast.  Yahoooo!!!  My kind of party.

We all went back together on Saturday night into Eilat, walked the boardwalk a bit, then rested up for our marvelous 6 hour bus home.  This was one of those vacations that you need a vacation from when you get back... but totally worth it, very beautiful and unique.  Everyone should go!  (Stephen's Travel Agency).

For everyone doing the math, you already know that the next weekend was November 20th... which is when Anna arrived!!!  Therefore, the gap is filled, and blogging will henceforth resume in December.  Chilling I know.  (that one is for Mom)

Not Constantinople...

After my last update, which took place at the then present time, I will now naturally jump back in time to fill in some of the material between where I had previously left off, and Anna's visit.  Bear with me.

Speaking of the visit, another day's worth of pictures are now up... our trip to the Baha'i Gardens!

http://picasaweb.google.com/stephenmw90

Before Anna's visit, my last update had been me just arriving and settling into school, so let us pick up from there and I will try to move pretty quickly to get back to the present.

SO, I settled in the weekend of October 8th - 10th, toured the city a bit, yada yada, and then I had my first week of classes.  The next weekend (10/15 - 10/17), many of the international kids took a trip down to the Carmel beach on Friday.  I will spare you another picture of my "bronzed Mediterranean skin" for now.  Saturday / Sunday, there was a short school trip to Jerusalem, but having just came from Jerusalem, Mike and I instead took a day trip to Caesarea.  Caesarea is a town with a harbor that was renovated by King Herod (same guy who did Masada... it's old...) to make a big trading port and impress the Romans or something.  So, there are a lot of cool Roman ruins here and it is a very pretty area.

One thing that I found pretty cool here was that the harbor was not actually originally well suited for a deep water port, so Herod had the area dug deeper, and dropped a bunch of concrete crates (or something like that) into the water to create a seawall, and voila, deep water port.

Also, I made time to lounge in a roman bathtub.

It looks like a hot tub to me... mmm...

Further activities included exploring the various ancient temples, houses, the big Roman-style theater, and racing some horses around the giant Hippodrome.

I won.

Another highlight / signature landmark of Caesarea are the extensive aqueducts there, of which we visited a portion.  I think there were more farther down, but we had to do a fair bit of walking just to get to this chunk, and it was just a day trip soo.. you know.

After another enchanting week of class, I hopped on another school organized trip, this time up north for some hiking in the Golan Heights.

This is an interesting area, not just because it is very pretty, and has notable landmarks like the Sea of Galilee, but also because in recent history it has been a point of... tension... between Israel and Syria.  Syria was kind of upset when Israel took it from them some 40 odd years ago... Israel was upset that rockets were being shot from there into Israel... something along those lines.  No matter, we avoided any military skirmishes and enjoyed ourselves, and I myself am happy that Israel has the land since that means I can hike there.  Also so rockets don't come into Haifa and hit my blast room.

On the first day of hiking, I don't think we were technically in the heights, just the general area, Mt. Meron I believe.  Some nice views were seen by all, and I learned that Lebanon also borders Israel in this region.

I can see Lebanon from my house!  (Where all those green trees end in the distance and the rocks begin, that's the border.) 

Despite our ideas of taking a nice day trip to Lebanon since the border was soooo cloooseeee, no such detour was made.  We thought it might be perceived as a border raid or something.  Again, no military engagement on this trip.

To finish off the day we visited the recently rehabilitated Hulu Valley reserve for some bird watching, seen heaaare.

The next day it was on to the Yehudia trail in the Golan Heights.  This was the harder of the two options, and it proved to be a very beautiful walk through this rift thingy.

The hike was mostly along a stream, and we got to stop at multiple waterfalls for a little swimming, but the real challenge of the hike proved to be the deep pools that we had to cross in order to continue on the trail.

I know I know I was a swimmer, no problem crossing a pool right?  Well funnily enough, when I swam in high school I didn't have a backpack with my camera inside.  I double bagged that sucker, and jumped in with it held as high above my head as possible...

mmffttplahahhhgarglegarglegargle

Ya I don't float that well in the first place so I'm pretty sure all other people saw was my wrists sticking out of the water with my bag, and the rest of me completely under.  I managed to come up for air luckily, but this was much more strenuous than I expected.  I was very relieved to make it across... not as much to find out we had to do it twice.

Break for some tanned guys.

Final destination of the hike was a scenic cove area that was known as "Heaven".  Dramatic.  Very nice though.

Moving on.

classes classes... classes...

Next weekend!  Man those classes just fly by (For those keeping track this is weekend of 10/29 - 10/31 now).

At the beginning of this week, I didn't really have much planned.  On Monday or Tuesday, some very impulsive flights were booked, and suddenly I had plans.  For anyone paying attention to the titles of these posts, you have probably deduced that I must be talking about...

Question:  Not Constantinople?

Answer:  Istanbul!!

Sorry I couldn't resist... the song was stuck in my head for a week.  Don't feel badly if you missed it.

We flew out Thursday night and got 4 full days there, which was awesome because we got to see a ton of stuff.  Let's do the play-by-play and I'll describe everything we did in detail.  Or would you prefer the quick highlights?  Maybe quick highlights for now...

First day was cloudy and a little drizzly, so we did the big museum complex...

(The Alexander Sarcophagus, now believed not to have actually contained Alexander the Great, but still awesome.)

... and then the mosque colloquially known as the Blue Mosque.  This mosque is quite impressive from the outside, and it was made to rival / outdo the Hagia Sofia, which sits right across the square, although the general consensus is it failed to do that.  The inside is very beautiful too... my first time in a mosque!

We finished the day with the Basilica Cistern, a surprisingly large underground ancient water storage area with a Lord of the Rings esque feel to it.

Day 2 was none other than Istanbul's iconic gem, the Hagia Sofia.  Although we decided it was less picturesque from the outside, as compared with the Blue Mosque, the inside, plus the history, whole package, etc, is no contest.  The East meets West, Christianity meets Islam atmosphere and artwork (yay Art History 102!!), not to mention the amazing structure (yay Art History 101!!) makes this baby stand out.  It is especially cool to see the Christian art that is being revealed and restored after it was covered up when the building was converted from a basilica to a mosque.

After some walking around the city, general sightseeing and exploring type stuff, I believe this is the day that we punctuated with a visit to a Turkish Bath.  This is the one we went to.  Basically some big Turkish guy takes you into a sauna with a giant warm marble slab and all these guys lying all over it, scrubs you, suds you, washes you up, and then you have the option to follow this up with an oil massage (I chose to do this...).  AWEsome!!

Day 3 was a cruise on the Bosphorus, the river that splits the European side of Istanbul and the Asian side.

Bridge from one side to other.  I wanted to run back and forth (I'm in Europe!  I'm in Asia!  I'm in Europe!...) alas... no time.

Second half of the day was the expansive Tokapi Palace complex.  It was here that we heard about the suicide bombing in the main square (which we had spent our last 2 nights in), which was eerie, but as our roommates later excitedly observed, we now had the full Middle Eastern experience... sweet...

We also got to compare our parents' reactions... I won!!  Decisively won, with Dad calling the Turkish foreign minister.  Yay they doo love me!

Lot of interesting stuff in the palace.  Worth mentioning is the museum here in which they have Muhammad's footprint, Moses' staff, and Abraham's cooking pan.

...

Yaa...

...

With most of our major tourist sites out of the way, the last day we tried to get off the beaten path a bit, walked the streets, saw the massive aqueducts that span one of the main highways, a beautiful church, climbed up on some of the old city walls...

... and even managed to find a synagogue!  Just in time for a service!  Such good Jews.  We sat in and were blown away by the guy leading the service, who never stopped talking or opened his book.  Freakish.

Thus concluded an awesome trip to Istanbul, we all had a great great time and I would absolutely recommend the city.  It is tres beautiful, has a great atmosphere, and a ton of history, plus it is cool to be in the juncture between Europe and Asia.  If you have more time, the countryside of Turkey is supposed to be unbelievable as well... I am thinking of opening a travel agency, how's my pitch doing?

I hope nobody got any whiplash there, we were moving pretty quickly but the holes are almost all filled in, so hang in there.