To the North

We've been touring around Israel this past week since Zach's brother came to visit - it's been really interesting to see the sites in the summer - the peak of what we thought the tourist season was.  But really, I haven't seen many more tourists than were here in the Spring (maybe it's the heat!).

Dizengoff Square got a brand new fountain that looks like it's from the 70's - nice and colourful :)

This is from inside the tombs at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, looking out at a staircase leading to nowhere.

The shiny statue at the Israel museum:

We took a tour in Bethlehem of the Banksy graffiti - we are pretty confident that the taxi driver took us to a bunch of imitations, but this one is reputed to be authentic (though not on the wall).

Banksy is an anonymous graffiti artist who got much of his initial fame from the art he did inside Palestine on the border fence/wall.  It was really interesting to see this part of Bethlehem and hear our taxi driver's thoughts on the issues there.

The temperature has been crazy hot - it is August after all so no one is surprised :)  So we went up north to escape the heat... unfortunately, it was in the middle of a heat wave.  I have been getting used to the temperatures here, they really aren't much different from a hot Ontario summer - you just never get any rain to break the weather.  If you look up the forecast for Tel Aviv it is almost always a sunny, 34C feeling like the low 40's with the humidity hovering around a nice, wet, 80%.  Once you're used to it, and if you stay out of  the sun, it's totally manageable.  But then we stepped out of the car into Tiberius and got hit with what I can only describe as wind from a furnace - it's incredible, I've never been so hot, only to feel a breeze that is even hotter - crazy!  But as we travelled up into Upper Galilee and to our hostel in Safed, it turned gorgeously dry and cool (ish).  The north is still easily my favourite part of Israel.  

We went back to one of my favourite National parks, Nimrod's Fortress.  Since we were high up in the Golan Heights, it was beautiful weather for hiking around, not too hot at all.  And we saw maybe five people total in the park, it was amazing. This high up we were also free from a lot of the dust and humidity that is plaguing Tel Aviv right now.

An Arabic tablet from the 13th century:

I love this place!

This, to me, sums up August in Israel:

Almost as close to Damascus as Tiberius!  On top of Mt. Bental Lookout and former army barracks.  On the road back down through the Golan we wanted to try a highway we'd never driven on that went right down along the border between Israel and the demilitarized zone with Syria (hwy 98 just south of the 91).  Unfortunately, when we got there, the road was blockaded so we had to go back the other way.  According to google maps we made it within 7km of the actual Syrian border.  The night before we had dinner about 1km from Lebanon.  I sometimes forget how close everything is here.  Well, except Bagdad (sic) - that is still 800km away apparently :)  

My favourite piece of art from the crazy metal sculptures on Mt. Bental.  Clap little guy! Clap!