© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

JERUSALEM

The bus journey from Yesha to Jerusalem was great. We were free! We could wear fresh clean clothes every day, and spend our time relaxing and having fun, no more back breaking work for us. We were looking forward to visiting Jerusalem, it would be nice to be a tourist for a few days before flying back home to the U.K. We took a taxi from where the bus dropped us to within the Old City walls. We wanted to stay inside the Old City if possible, we hoped to stay at the Gloria Hotel. I waited outside while Richard went in to ask if they had any vacancies, unfortunately they were full. We saw that there was another hotel across the road from the Gloria. We tried there, they had vacancies. Our new home for the next few days was the Lark Hotel, 4 Latin Patriarche Road, Jerusalem. The Lark Hotel was small with just a handful of rooms, which gave it a homely feel. Our room was clean, average in size, en-suite, and looked out over the street below. The the hotel was run by an Armenian family, and the staff were very very friendly. At the time of our stay breakfast was included. It was the same every day, pitta bread, hummus, jam, and a hard boiled egg, served with tea or coffee. The Lark restaurant next door run by the hotel, served reasonably priced traditional Armenian food. After checking in we walked out into the nearby streets. It felt quite strange seeing so many people, after the relative isolation on the Moshav. Everything felt so fast, and dirty, and noisy. But it was good to be walking, watching, and living life again. There were a couple of coffee bars nearby, we sat outside one and had a drink. Then we walked round the city a little more before heading back to the hotel. After a good nights sleep we were up and out early. We had lots to see and not much time. The next few days were spent walking, visiting places of interest, and eating. We enjoyed all the delicious food the street vendors and excellent restaurants in Jerusalem had to offer. I have always loved Jewish food, my mother was brought up eating it, and she often cooked it at home for us. At home in London we would visit markets that sold Jewish food, such as bagels, chopped liver, gefilte fish, matzah balls, lox, latkes, kugel, and halva, all absolutely delicious. Richard and I ate lots of good food in Jerusalem, we enjoyed baba ghanooj, egg and cheese pie, shawerma sandwiches, falafel, and lots of salads and yogurts. It was a real pleasure to eat foods that we hadn’t had to cook ourselves, it was nice to be waited on. We loved staying within the Old City, it was interesting walking round the different quarters, Jewish Quarter, Armenian Quarter, Christian Quarter, and the Muslim Quarter. We loved Jerusalem, it was such a lively energetic place and so diverse. As it is the holy city for three of the world’s main religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it couldn’t feel anything other than diverse, and full of vitality. We noticed that each of the different quarters really did feel like a completely separate place. We felt very welcome in all of them, without exception. We were often approached by local people who stopped us to say hello, and some of them chatted to us at length about many different subjects including their life in Jerusalem. They had interesting stories to tell us, and lots of suggestions for things we should do and see, and most importantly what and where we should eat! There are so many sights to see in Jerusalem, The Citadel (Tower of David), Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock, The Western Wall (Wailing Wall), and The Mount of Olives. It was while we were strolling along, taking in the sights of Jerusalem one afternoon, that we were stopped by a couple of elderly men. They invited us to their home for drinks, they said Richard would sit and drink tea with the men, while I stayed with the women drinking wine. Richard was convinced that this was definitely the wrong way round, he wanted the alcohol, so we politely refused! Then they offered to take us to The Mount of Olives, we were surprised that there was no catch to the invitation, they were just being friendly. We much prefer being on our own though, so we thanked them and decided to go and see The Western Wall (Wailing Wall). As it is considered the holiest shrine of the Jewish world, or the fourth holiest overall after the Holy of Holies, and the most holy place accessible to the Jewish people due to Muslim control of the Temple Mount, we didn’t want to visit Israel and not see it. As well as visiting the historic sites, we wanted to look at the markets. We enjoyed walking on the cobblestones along the narrow winding alleys, stopping every now and then to look at various stalls in the bazaars. The labyrinth of streets took us on a journey into the heart of a spectacular visual feast. Every step we took our senses were stimulated, aromas of spices, brightly coloured materials, and vendors inviting us into their shops to admire the goods and drink tea with them. We kept walking, we didn’t want to purchase anything for ourselves, we were looking for presents for our family and friends. I particularly wanted to get a Mezuzah, (a sacred parchment inscribed by hand with two portions of the Torah, stored in a protective case which is hung on the door posts of Jewish homes), for my mummy. She had always had one hanging by the door at all of our homes, but someone had recently stolen it, that’s London for you! After lots of searching we found the perfect Mezuzah for my mummys front door. I also saw a beautiful gold Mezuzah charm I couldn’t resist buying, I knew my mummy would be pleased to add it to her every growing charm bracelet. There were lots of other things we would liked to have bought, but funds were running low. In fact they were so low it was time for us to return to London. We left Jerusalem and went to Tel Aviv to arrange our flights back to the U.K.

TEL AVIV

We arrived in Tel Aviv and looked for somewhere to stay. We didn’t stay at Momo’s Hostel this time, we stayed somewhere different, but I can’t remember the name of it. I think I have blanked it out of my memory because it was horrible. I do remember that we slept in a room with about 6 other people. There was one other couple, who were very strange to say the least, I think they had been smoking too much wacky backy! The other people in the room were single travellers. Unfortunately we couldn’t sleep together, Richard was on the top bunk above a young guy, and I was sleeping under a young, dirty, smelly, hippie girl, on the other side of the room. She really did smell bad, so bad that all of the other people in the room complained about her, and tried to get her moved, some encouraged her to shower, all without success. Thankfully we weren’t going to be staying there for too long anyway. We spent most of our time in Tel Aviv trawling round the travel agents, we needed to book two flights to London. This wouldn’t normally have been a problem, but we didn’t have enough money to pay for the tickets. I had phoned my wonderful mummy, and she had given me her credit card numbers. So we went to every travel agent we saw, asking them if we could book the tickets without actually having the card with us. They all said no. We continued to look for travel agents, and finally found a very helpful young man, who after flirting with both of us for ages, agreed to book the tickets. We were going home in a couple of days. Now our tickets were booked we could relax and enjoy the rest of our time in Tel Aviv. There were a couple of modern shopping centres near to our accommodation, we spent some of our time there, enjoying the shops, air conditioning, and food. We thought about going to the camel market to buy a camel, but apparently they didn’t actually sell camels there! Just as well really, our luggage was already pretty heavy, even after leaving some of our clothes at the Moshav and some more of them at the Lark Hotel in Jerusalem. We actually left a really cool Paul Smith waistcoat, and a lovely Jean Paul Gaultier jacket at the Lark Hotel, hopefully they fitted the cleaner. We walked along the sea front inTel Aviv, we didn’t swim it looked a bit rough and busy. We sat and watched the families having fun, and ate ice creams and yogurt. The women were completely covered up even when swimming, and they seemed to struggle to stay upright with the weight of the water on their soaking wet clothes. I guess they were still able to enjoy playing with their children. Tel Aviv felt different to us this time, a completely different place to when we stayed when we first arrived in Israel all those months ago. I guess it was the culmination of us spending so much time together, our experiences on the Moshav, the death of our friend, and everything else we had done and seen. The day of our departure arrived, we got to the airport hours before we usually would, to allow for the lengthy customs queues. We were right to do so, the queues were the longest we had ever seen at an airport. It took over two hours just to check in for our flight. I guess it was good that the authorities were very thorough, we had our luggage thoroughly searched, and were asked lots of questions, as were almost all of the passengers. When we finally boarded our plane the captain made an announcement. Our take off was going to be slightly delayed, as there were two passengers still with the customs staff. When the two passengers boarded the plane we recognised them immediately. It was the strange couple who we had shared the room with at our last accommodation, obviously I wasn’t the only one who thought there were space cadets! When they walked passed our seats, we knew they had been treated to some rubber glove treatment! Thankfully the flight home to Gatwick passed peacefully. This trip to Israel turned out to be just the beginning of our travels. The months we had spent in Yesha/Israel were definitely an experience we will never forget.

Oceania