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!
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.
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Yaa...
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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.
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