The Greatest Man to Ever Live

Today was the last day of our Trip To Israel Then Jordan But Not For As Long Then Back To Israel Just For A Night And Then Home during which any activities happened. One activity happened, and it was pretty awesome. Still in the "Then Jordan" part of our journey, we had a buffet breakfast that had the potential for excellence, but was crippled by its lack of bacon. After eating, we set out for the jeep tour we were to take in the mountain range Wadi Rum. Driving us to the jeep was our guide for the day, Ali.

Sorry, wrong one.

There we go. Epic, just epic.

I say, sincerely, that Ali is the greatest human to ever live. He laughs in the face of danger. Seriously. There were several points during the tour where the rest of us were terrified and he just laughed and laughed.

We were driving through the desert when Ali randomly drove the car up the face of the mountain. It was at this point we would be taking our desert jeep tour in the Toyota Fortuner.

The greatest vehicle ever devised by man.

Ali drove this thing up an down the sides of mountains, through countless sand dunes, and into the bowels of my soul. (Not really, but I believe good writing comes in groups of three, and we didn't really drive through anything but sand dunes and mountains.) All along the way, he told us facts about the area, as tour guides generally do. The place was beautiful. 

Trip Highlights:

• My technologically-challenged mom attempting to take a picture of us
• The roller coaster-esque van experience
• Ali

Just look at him. Magnificent.

After the jeep [sic] tour, we went back over the border and started driving to the hotel, fifteen minutes from the airport, where I now sit writing this as we pack. Along the way, we complained about sore parts of our bodies,  stopped for peeing and ice cream, and listened to Billy Joel's badly-done cover of my song "Piano Man." (See? Three clauses!) My sisters also informed me that drugs make you eat people, and that all honeymoons have chaperones to monitor the couple while they're having sex so they don't mess up. I had not heard such things before, and am glad to have learned them.

Our hotel is above a shopping mall, where I went for a lovely dinner at McDonald's. It was the first time I'd been to McDonald's in months, because it's so unhealthy. The problem with McDonald's is that their food tastes delicious, so it made it very hard not to eat my entire burger-that-was-much-bigger-than-I-thought-it-was-when-I-ordered-it. I did anyway. Alas, no McFlurry.

Tomorrow my Trip To Israel Then Jordan But Not For As Long Then Back To Israel Just For A Night And Then Home is over. This means my English class assignment is done, and I can stop blogging, but blogging is fun, so I'm not going to stop. You high-double-digits-number-of-people-I-know-personally need my insight on the world, so I'll keep blogging everyday. If you like it, show your friends! Show your very literate dog! Show any famous people you happen to know, that I might become famous by association.

This is Nate Perlmeter, your tour guide to Israel Then Jordan But Not For As Long Then Back To Israel Just For A Night And Then Home, signing off.

Tomorrow, a retrospective on the trip, full of witty photo captions, and footage of whatever take-out food we get after getting home at 6:00 P.M.

Bathrobe Memories

This blog was originally going to start with the wonderful title of "As I write this, I'm wearing a bathrobe," but I am not wearing a bathrobe, and like George Washington, who never famously cut down a cherry tree, never said, "I cannot tell a lie." I would be wearing a bathrobe, but I had to take it off before going to dinner.

Let me narrate the events that led toward me wearing a bathrobe. It all started this morning when my family left our hotel in Eilat, Israel to go to the country of Jordan and tour the ancient city of Petra. After eating a breakfast provided by the hotel, we went to the border, got our passports checked, and walked into the no-mans-land between the two countries. For three minutes, I was walking on dry land, but I wasn't inside a country. It was a strange feeling.

We walked through the gate and came out in Jordan, thus necessitating the change of my blog's title from "Trip To Israel" to "Trip To Israel Then Jordan But Not For As Long Then Back To Israel Just For A Night And Then Home." On the Jordanian side of the border, we used some not-very-nice restrooms (Jordanian Tourism Board, get on the job), and met our tour guide, Aladdin.

Sorry, wrong one.

On left. Kinda looks like Dustin Hoffman, right?

Dustin Aladdin led us through Petra, an ancient city once ruled by the Greeks and then the Romans, with influences from both clear. The cool thing about Petra is that all the buildings of the city are built into mountains. All they had to do was take out some stone in the right places, and Voila! A building would appear right before your eyes.

Examples.

The people who lived in Petra were much more concerned with the afterlife than their own day-to-day lives, so tombs and religious sites stand out a lot more than living spaces. This is the Treasury, a temple. It's big.

Along the trail, there were many Bedouins (a native people) trying to sell us rides through Petra on donkey, horse, and camel. As Aladdin (the guide, not the fictional character) said, "They will say to you, 'my horse is named Shakira, my horse is named Michael Jackson.' Don't pay them anything." At first, the salespeople were annoying, but by the time we were going back to the hotel on the 2.5 mile walk in the ninety-degree heat, they were looking pretty good. Too bad we didn't have any Jordanian money.

Back at the hotel, sweating like buckets, we jumped into the pool, turned into icicles and climbed out. A couple hours later, I showered. I've discovered over these past couple of days of living in hotels that I have a love/hate relationship with handheld shower heads. They're annoying to use, but the water is so comfortable. Sometimes they even annoy other people, like yesterday when I sprayed water all over the bathroom floor before my sisters could shower.

So far, I have been meandering betwixt and between, but now I come to the meat of my story. After showering, I wore the bathrobe the hotel provided. It was comfortable.

Huh. That wasn't that exciting.

My Prognostication Was A Bit Off

[The least eventful] will be tomorrow, where the main activity will be sitting in a car and listening to music.


That was how I left it yesterday. So it had been written, so it was to be done. But, it appears my prognostication was off a bit. Things happened today. 


This morning we left our apartment in Tel Aviv and took a cab to the airport, where we got our rental car, a Mazda 5. In this sexy, sleek, sports car, we began the 3.5 hour drive toward Eilat, another Israeli city. A few minutes into the drive, we plugged an iPhone into the car's stereo system and shuffled the show tunes playlist. It was time for a grand Perlmeter family sing-along!


Highlights of today's sing-along included:

• "The Morning Report" from The Lion King
• "On My Own" from Les Miserables
• "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music
• "I Dreamed A Dream," Glee edition
• And most of the first act of RENT

An hour into the ride, we stopped at hiking spot Ayn Avdat National Park, a beautiful spot smack dab in the middle of the desert. We took in the lovely landscape.

We hiked across a pond while paying homage to The Beatles.

I showed off my terrible, terrible camera smile.

The hike was really fun, even if it was a wee bit hot outside. We got back in the car and set the course for Eilat, but we were soon distracted by a bunch of ibises blocking the road. Here's an ibex. The hike was really fun, even if it was a wee bit hot outside. We got back in the car and set the course for Eilat, but we were soon distracted by a bunch of ibises blocking the road. Here's an ibex.

There were lots of ibises, including two very dramatic looking ones that we realized were fake upon a closer look.

Soon thereafter, the cramped, back-pain inducing car ride was over, and we arrived at our very nice hotel. My dad and I were excited to go snorkeling. Here are some pictures I took of the snorkeling experience.

There was no snorkeling experience. It was closed when we got there, so we took a dip in the pool instead. In the pool, rather unsurprisingly, I got wet.

I toweled off and we went to dinner and . . . that was pretty much it.

I guess some stuff did happen today. Too bad, I thought my psychic abilities were getting pretty well honed.

"It Will Completely Change Our Understanding Of Cats"

This sentence popped into my head today.

"It will completely change our understanding of cats," I said to my mom.

"What will?" she replied. I shrugged, and we continued walking, but I began pondering the question. What would completely change our understanding of cats?

My first thought would be that a single cat would have to do something fantastic, like become a master chef or golf champion, climb Mount Everest, or direct an Oscar-winning movie. But such acts couldn't completely change our understanding of cats, because only a single cat would be doing it. A single human has glow-in-the-dark eyes, a single human invented penicillin, and a single human had the greatest name in history (Nathaniel Bacon), but these haven't changed our complete understanding of humans. So what would make such an impact on our understanding of cats? They would have to work in a group.

What would cats do in a group? They wouldn't do any benign activity, like synchronized swimming or curling. Cats are devious little critters, you know it from the look in their eyes. With the powers of all the cats in the world combined, they could take over the world, and that's just what they would do. They would take over the world, and become the new overlords of all humans, something that would completely change our understanding of cats.

I thought my investigation was done, but I continued to ponder, as we ponderers do, about cats. We feed them and give them a place to sleep. Some of us even give them clothes to wear, which repulse the rest of us. We are at our cats' beck and call. The cats already rule us. They are already our overlords. We just have to accept this. We have to completely change our understanding of cats.

Today, in Israel, I haven't done much. For the first time during the trip, I got to sleep in, and did so until 10:25. I was looking forward to not doing much today. This blog post would've been a wonderful companion to Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song" and a nice brandy, or perhaps a Sauvingnon Blanc 1974, or some strawberry milk. Alas, my parents made me get up and go to an art museum with them.

I was looking forward to seeing some art (Carney, Garfunkel), but it turned out my mom had misread the website and as we got there the museum was about to close. We left, and I looked for some lunch, until my parents suggested I have ice cream instead of lunch. To most people, this would be baffling, a complete reversal of a classic sitcom joke, but my family follows the A.I.C.R.N policy (Always Ice Cream Right Now), so I understood. (I love commas.) We went for ice cream, and that was the day's grand adventure.

Even though we didn't go to the museum, we got in an hour of walking, so it was only the second-least-eventful day of the trip. (#1 will be tomorrow, where the main activity will be sitting in a car and listening to music. The blog post will be very exciting. Stay tuned.) Back at the apartment, I did some math homework (Rejoice!) and wrote this blog. There's still some of the day left, but I have a pretty good idea of what will happen, so I'll just blog it now:

We went to dinner. The restaurant was overlooking the sea. The food was delicious. The sunset was beautiful. We came back to the apartment and I went to sleep. The End.








Cats.

We Shall Overcome.

The World's Greatest Hummus

Hello, viewing populace! There is much to blog about today, much indeed. Well, actually, there's only one topic, but it's an extensive one! The topic is Jerusalem, what most people would answer with if you asked them to name a city in Israel. Jerusalem is an ancient city, holy to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. It is also home to the greatest hummus restaurant in the world. I'll have more on that later.

This morning, I was woken up at 8:00 to a breakfast of a melting chocolate croissant and lukewarm milk. It was pretty tasty. After eating it, I sat for a while. I also got dressed and brushed my teeth, but I assume you're not interested in that, so I'll skip ahead to the part where we got off the bus and entered Jerusalem.

Not having gotten much sleep the night before, I had been looking forward to sleeping on the bus, but my mission was a failure. Thus, for about the first ten minutes after getting off the bus, I felt really tired. But then we arrived at our first destination, and my mood brightened considerably. We were at one of those outdoor markets that are all the rage with the kids these days. I snapped some pics of fruit.

As we continued through the market, we got deeper and deeper into the city of Jerusalem. It was really interesting because of the combination of old and new. There were modern shopping centers and restaurants built into ancient stone buildings, and we stupid-looking American tourists were walking right next to traditionally-dresses orthodox Jews.

There were many cool things in the market. I saw a bunch of talented guitarists playing out in the open. I tried yelling "Free Bird!" at them, but they didn't listen. Something else I noticed was the huge amount of Jesus. So much Jesus.











Now about the delicious hummus, or humous, or turpentine, or however you spell it. It's at a little restaurant called AbuShukri on Jerusalem, and it's the greatest in the world. It is necessary to try it should you ever go to Jerusalem.












The apex of the day was our visit to the Western Wall, the only wall left standing of the Second Holy Temple. Funnily, my camera died right after taking this shot. Seeing the Western Wall was a mixed bag. The wall itself was an awesome sight. The partition dividing men from women was not. I couldn't believe such old, stupid ideas were still active in such an advancing, important city. I really wanted to climb up on top of the partition and yell,
"Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall!"



After seeing the wall, we walked back to the bus station and went back to the apartment, before having a Georgian dinner. As in, food from Georgia, a country I do not know much about, but who's food is delicious. Then we went back to the apartment, at which point I began blogging. I continued to blog, until I got to the point where I typed this sentence that you are currently reading. I then wrote this sentence, and finished blogging.

Schnitzel and History

In my last blog (also my first) yesterday morning, I said I was going to the beach. Immediately after typing that, I went to the beach. Behold the beach. 

("Behold the beach" being, as you would point out, Mrs. Dominick, an imperative sentence.) At said beach, my family sat on beach chairs and tried to get tan, my dad only joining us after playing a computer game for an hour. We all decided that he wasn't allowed to abandon family activities to play computer games anymore, but I have a feeling he won't follow that decision. I went in the water for a little, but it was boring as there were no waves.
"Lame," I said to the Mediterranean sea, "try harder."

Quite an epic picture, I know.

After the beach we went to an outdoor market and a crafts fair. There were many musical performers on the streets, some good, some terrible, and one that appeared to be a gospel group, which is rather unusual for Israel. At the market we saw lots of tasty-looking fruits and bought some grapes. We also saw the usual bootleg T-Shirts of popular characters, and some fruits that did not look tasty. Behold fruit.



At the crafts fair, there were, well, crafts. Some were pretty cool. there were some dioramas of the lives of famous people, although one was of Coca-Cola, which is a soft drink, not a person. There were also small sculptures made out of spoons and forks, and hundreds of exact replicas of the human body, apparently carbon-based.

Hours later, we went to dinner at a tapas restaurant. Their menu advertises The Best Ice Cream In Town. As far as I know, that's true. That stuff was delicious.

This morning we woke up bright and much too early. After eating a cinnamon danish, I walked to the place where we met our tour guide, Muki. Everyone else walked to meet Muki also, but they didn't eat cinnamon danishes, and so my sentence would have been either a lie or grammatically incorrect, and we wouldn't want that, now, would we, Mrs. Dominick? (That sentence had way too many commas.) Over the course of six hours, Muki walked us all through Tel Aviv, teaching us about the city's history. We learned all about Bauhaus, a style of architecture that favors function over beauty, which originated in Germany but was stopped during the rise of Nazism. Tel Aviv has the most Bauhaus buildings in the world. We also saw lots of graffiti. Pretty much everywhere you look in Tel Aviv there's graffiti. Some of it is very pretty while some is simply words written out.

We learned about Chaim Nachman Bialik, who hid Zionist messages in his nursery rhymes, and we learned about Mayor Mayor Dizengoff, who's first name was also his job. At the end of the day, we went to a cemetery in which many famous Tel Avivians are buried, and of which I'd have many pictures if my computer weren't spazzing out.

Oh, how could I forget? It's even in the title! I had schnitzel for lunch.

Beginning the Grand Quest

Well, hello down there!

Or, up there, as wherever you are, you're probably not any lower than where I now am, Israel. Israel is at the lowest elevation of any country in the world. Now, you may be reading this from the bottom of the Dead Sea, which is in Israel and is the lowest point in the Earth's crust. If this is the case, I applaud you on two counts. First, I applaud you for finding Wi-Fi down there. Second, I applaud you for not dying under the thousands of pounds of water pressure.

Stepping awkwardly away from the people at the bottom of the sea, I welcome you, Mrs. Dominick, to my blog, entitled, as you can see in that lovely blue font up there, "Trip to Israel." My first posts for this blog will be the journal about Israel you assigned me for English class. I'll get started on that.

After a chicken dinner cooked up by my mom, my family (my sisters aged 21 and 23, and my parents whose ages I won't disclose out of fear) and I boarded a cab at 8:00 P.M on Sunday night, bound for the always lovely Newark Airport. Unusually, everything went smoothly at the airport, and as we got on the plane, I watched some TV on the monitor on the seat in front of me. Then it started. That is, the baby sitting directly in front of me began screaming and crying. It was excruciatingly loud. (Ah, excruciatingly, what a beautiful word.) My sisters and I debated whether or not to yell at the parents, who were doing nothing to shut their child up, but we ended up also doing nothing, a decision I still regret.

An hour into the flight, at about midnight in New Jersey and 7:00 A.M. Israel time, the flight attendants served a mediocre chicken dinner. Aside from the question of why my Caesar Salad dressing was so gelatinous, what puzzled me about this was the timing. My guess is that by completely messing up the schedule of the day's meals, they were trying to reverse the effects of jet lag.

After eating, I went to sleep, periodically woken by the baby, and finally by an egg breakfast I deigned not to finish. At 4:30 P.M, we walked off the plane, with seven hours of our lives gone, never spent, and never to return.

We got our baggage, and went to the apartment we're renting, where I now sit writing this. The apartment is in Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city. After sitting around and doing nothing for a bit, we went out for a walk. On the walk, I noticed that most signs in the city were written in Hebrew and English, and it reminded me that most Israelis who had helped us on the trip spoke English in order to help American tourists, a very annoying group of people I'm happy to be part of. ("Of which I'm happy to be part." Sorry, Mrs. Dominick.)

After the familiar experience of eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant, we walked back to the apartment, watched a year-old episode of Ellen, and went to sleep. As I write this blog the following morning, we're about to go to the beach, so as they say in Hebrew, "¡vamos a la plia!"

Oh. That would be Spanish.