Angela and I have been in Israel the past couple weeks. Mostly for my work, but we're squeezing in some sights. A few notes...
- We went to the Western Wall in Jerusalem last Friday afternoon. We read later that there was a near-violent demonstration there that same morning between pretty-orthodox Jewish women and more-orthodox Jewish men. Something about whether women should be able to wear a particular kind of scarf near the wall. (I'm not making this up)
- Cesearea is a Roman city that became a Christian city that became a Muslim city and on and on. The Romans (Herod the Great) built an protected harbor by sinking barges full of volcanic ash that became a solid base where they could drive pilons. Fascinating engineering. You can climb all over the ruins there. Not that you should. On the other hand, they built a coffee shop into the ruins of a 2,000 year old wall so... what the heck.
- We also visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This is where different sects of Christianity fight with each other for control of this one building. Actual priest fist fights have broken out there.
- Things shut down here Friday at 6pm. Like you can't get hot food kind of shut down. And the some of the elevators stop working.
- We found FroYo in Haifa. Delicious. In Israel, it's all about the toppings. The guy behind the counter enjoyed telling us the English names for all 20-something of the toppings. Six or seven sauce possibilities (including something called "whisky sauce") and two types of melted chocolate.
- Cafe Louise has the best food in Haifa that we've had.
- Tel-Aviv has the awesomest play-ground. We played around, climbed, swung and got dizzy. At least as good as the rich-kids play-ground we found in Maui. (fewer bridges and towers, but more ropes and swings)
The big news items in Israel are things like:
- Should Israel do a prisoner exchange (1,000 Palestianians for one captured IDF soldier)
- Some orthodox school has segregated girls of one Jewish dominations from the rest of the school and is under scrutiny
- Egypt is building an under-ground wall around their side of the Gaza strip
- The king of Jordan just dissolved the legislature over there. He says he wants to reign in spending and bring some fiscal responsibility to the state and the legislature is getting in the way. We're going to Jordan tomorrow.
- Israel is worst (or second-worst) in the developed world on some high school aptitude tests. There's a growing gap between the knows and the know-nots here that people are worried about. Makes me feel better about the U.S. Bad news for the Israelis is that they didn't have any kids who are in the ultra-orthodox religious schools take the test so the results are actually skewed upwards.
We were lucky to come on this trip with one of my co-workers who has an exception knowledge of 2000-years-ago history. So we learned a lot about the various plagues, sieges, murders and conquests of the area.
Back to work... last day at the office...
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