Akko

About a month ago, Pavel and I started going on weekend day trips. Our first was to Akko, a coastal city north of Haifa. Akko is notable for several reasons. In 1798, Napolean unsuccessfully laid seige on the city. In the picture below, you can see part of the protective wall that surrounds the old city. Akko is also one of the few cities in Israel in which both Jews and Arabs live together. Pavel and I discuss this more in depth in the podcast, but I'll just mention that in general, this doesn't create too many problems, although conflicts arise from time to time. But mostly, I was there for the hummus.

You see, Akko is known as having the best hummus in the world. I learned this while on my birthright trip. We were walking by the water in Akko's old city when Yoni, our tour guide, pointed out a restaurant, saying that this restaurant, here in this tiny city, was home to the best hummus in the world. Did we stop and eat there? Of course not. There wasn't any time to stop. There's never any time for hummus! I made a vow that I would come back to Israel some day, and when I did, I was going to find that restaurant and have me some hummus. In other words, Akko's hummus is secretly the real reason I'm in Israel. (I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "How much better can the hummus be in Akko? I've had hummus in literally every other city in the world and there's a lot of good hummus out there." If you ask me, you should stop being so cynical.)

Somehow--and I don't know how this happened--Pavel and I couldn't find the hummus restaurant that Yoni vaguely pointed out to me nine months ago. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm usually great at things like that, but in this case, I came up short. Instead of eating the best hummus in the world, we went to some crappy, overpriced tourist trap that was listed in the guidebook as a place that only "insiders" know about. In other news, "insider" is my new favorite pseudonym for "white person." Here's an example of how it can be used:

Pavel: What did you think of the shuk in Akko?

Sam: It sure had a lot of insiders.

Pavel: Yeah, our guidebook sure does a great job of making us feel like insiders.

Some of our fellow insiders shopping at the shuk

What really frustrates me, though, is how stupid I was about finding the hummus place. I could have called Yoni and asked him what the hummus place is called, where it is, and how to get there. I could have also asked any person in Akko those same questions. Did I? Nope. Why? Because I'm a moron. Now I'm going to have to make Aliyah. I really don't want to do that, but how else will I ever get to try the best hummus in the world? I think I'll make a good soldier.

New Akko city street

This view does not impress me

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Catching Up

I know I haven't been a great blogger lately. Certainly a lot has happened since my last post. Let's recap some of the bigger things that have "gone down" since April 30th, shall we?

- Citing irreconcilable differences, Justin and I split up as roommates. I got to keep the apartment, while Justin moved back to the United States. We had some great times, but in the end, we weren't meant to be together as roommates in Israel. For obvious reasons, we both agreed not to comment on the split for one month. Well, my friends, that month has passed and I have a few things I'd like to get off my chest. Just because Justin and I aren't living together anymore doesn't mean that we still love you. We don't. In fact, if not for this blog, we'd probably still be roommates. I want you to think about that for a few minutes. To be fair, you're not the only person I blame for this. I also blame Justin.

Can you believe this guy?

Anyway, Justin moving out seriously shook up the Ra'anana social dynamics. Here's how it boils down: Justin, Pavel, and I hung all the time. With Justin gone, it's just me and Pavel most of the time. Pavel works during the day. I rarely do and Justin never did. This makes things considerably more boring during daytime hours. You would think this would lead to more blog posts, right? You'd be wrong.

-I lined up work for my return to the US. I'll be teaching tennis at the same place I did last summer. This is good, because I am very broke. Plus, nothing beats working outdoors and playing tennis all the time. I'll be starting that around June 20th. For reasons I'm about to mention, I may keep the blog going through the summer and into next year. For those same reasons, I also need to find some supplemental work for the summer.

-I did some more traveling. Pavel and I visited the northern cities of Akko and Haifa and spent two nights in the old city of Jerusalem. This week, I visited some family friends who live on a Kibbutz near Tiberias. All of the trips were a lot of fun, and I'll try and get some blog posts up with pictures shortly.

-I sprained my ankle playing basketball. I had the exact same injury last year, only worse. Its been four days and I can already walk without a limp. I may be back on the basketball court, spraining more ankles within a week.

-The big news: On August 8th, I fly to Hong Kong, where I'll spend the following 10 months teaching English in a Chinese public school. Right now, I don't have much more information, other than the fact that A) I'm incredibly excited, and B) I'll continue the blog in some form or another. I may post occasionally throughout the summer on my trip preparation (and maybe even some tennis anecdotes). Obviously, living in Hong Kong will be nothing like anything I've ever done. Hopefully, that'll translate into some interesting blog fodder.

In other news, I only a couple of weeks left in Israel. Pretty soon, I'm outta here. Before going home, though, I'm headed to L.A. for five days to visit college friends. As for the rest of my time in Israel, here's what you can expect:

-A couple of posts recapping some of my recent trips (with pictures).

-A two-part podcast about traveling to Akko.

-A twitter here and there.

-A few exit posts about final thoughts, feelings, murders, etc. These could conceivably continue past my time in Israel.

-A post about L.A.

That's it for now, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Podcast now in iTunes

The podcast is now searchable in the iTunes music store. To find it, just follow this link or open the music store and search "gogoisrael." If you use another application to download podcasts, here's our feed:

http://gogoisrael.podbean.com/feed

With the podcast on your iPod, you can listen in the car, at the gym, or on the go! I like to tune in just before going to bed so I can fall asleep to the sound of my own beautiful voice.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Egypt Podcast Part 3 of 3

Hey Bros,

Here's the third and final part of our podcast.

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Were these worth it? Should we do more?

Byeeeeeee

Egypt Podcast Part 2 of 3

Hey Gang,

Check out part 2 of our podcast. Pavel and I "dish" on getting ripped off in Egypt.

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Byeeeeeeeeeeee

Egypt Podcast Part 1 of 3

Okay, I admit it. I've been a bad blogger since returning from Egypt. That's about to change, though. Stupid Pavel and I had been playing around with the idea of doing a podcast for a while now. Well, we did it! The podcast covers all of the fun and horrifying things we saw and did while traveling in Egypt. Part one today, part two tomorrow, part three on Wednesday.

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I have more travel essays coming this week, and I'll try and finally put up some of my awesome photos.

Byeeeeeeeeeeee

Luxoring

After the night in the desert we continued down to Luxor where we had two days of touring various temples and tombs. On the train we met a coepld of other travelers that were coincidentally staying at the same hostel as us, the Bob Marley Hostel (silly name but it was the highest rated hostel in Luxor on hostelworld.com and only $4 per night per person). They were sisters from London traveling together. They seemed like they'd be good company so we invited them to join us on our tours of Luxor, and as the price was right, they joined us (about $20 I think).

Bob Marley Hostel Rooftop

We took a short nap after arriving as the 10 hour overnight train ride was about as restful as playing tug of war with a gaggle of goofy giggling geese guarding Gob's gardens. We then spent the overcast afternoon touring the Karnak and Luxor Temples. Karnak was really cool as it was essentially built piecewise by several Pharaohs, each adding their own part to the vast collaboration of temples, obelisks as well as a sacred man-made lake.

Large Statue outside of the Karnak TemplesOutside of the Luxor Temple

Turns out that every friday night the Bob Marley Hostel cooks dinner for all the guests and conveniently we were there on a Friday. It seemed as if most of the people in the Hostel (about 20 people or so) all went up to the rooftop lounge where a feast was layed out for us to gorge on. None of us could believe that this amazing dinner (as well as good breakfasts) were included in the $4 per night that we were paying.

The next day we went first to the Valley of the Kings. Valley of the Kings was a secret hidden valley in Egypt. When the Pharaohs realized that people could see the pyramids and then would rob the tombs within, they started building tombs in this secret valley. We were told the Valley remained a secret as very few knew its exact location. The workers were blindfolded while in transit to work on the elaborate tombs. They are actually still finding hidden tombs of ancient Pharaohs as the another one was just found in the past year. How crazy is that? They've been there for thousands of years BC and we're still discovering stuff?

Valley of the Kings

We then went to the Temple of Hot-Chicken-Soup (or Hatshepsut as the Egyptians call her). She was a very powerful female king and made this pretty awesome temple for herself so that she could prove her awesomeness.

Huge awesomeness of Hatshepsut

We then went to Ramses III's war temple. I think our tourguide was tired because she told us it was nothing special, but we all agreed that it was pretty amazing. The paintings were quite elaborate and the heiroglyphics carved in were much deeper than usual so that they would never be erased.

Once again, after some relaxation we had to return to the trainstation for another 10 hour, overnight train back to Cairo.