Free Birds: Is-rael Is-the best

Much like most of our greatest adventures, our first night in our new destination, Israel, was spent in an airport. On a five star airport hotel ranking I would give the Tel-Aviv airport a 3. It's modern, spacious, and has lots of Cafés open for you in the morning as well as free wifi and decent bathrooms, but the floors were pretty dirty and there were pretty much no dark corners to curl up in at all. Eye masks helped a lot, but the clamour of rolling bags and shoes danced around us most the night.

Welcome to Israel where McDonald's are blue...and kosher

We spent a day in Telaviv before heading to jerusalem. You look at the city and you think OLD - older than anything we could even touch in the states, some of it is really run down, but other parts of it have that old charm. telaviv itself is really developed with a big downtown next to the beach with a boardwalk running through it. We rode bikes around the boardwalk - it totally reminds me of Santa Monice or Venice Beach! Aunt Carol you would feel right at home there!! ;). Another highlight of telaviv - eating the most delicious hummus I've ever had and a huge thing of falafels! So authentic and so ridiculously good. It's almost bitter sweet to have this much good food abroad because now nothing else will compare! But you better believe I've already yelped some authentic gyro and falafel joints near home. I plan to hunt until I find the best place I can find!

The best hummus I have eve beheld or eaten.

Look at that face. He's in love or lust and who can blame him??

Felt just like home! Especially because there were people playing paddle ball everywhere on the beach!! That's my sport!!

Now on to jerusalem. Jerusalem is AWESOME!

(View from the Mt of Olives)

The city itself is so multicultural although walking down the street you'll see mainly crowds of Jewish people dressed in the black cloaks, white button up shirts, black pants, black hats and long curly sideburns you know that this is the only place in the world you would see this and it's completely normal. There are a ton of outdoor markets with the most amazing pastries, fruits, candy, nuts, baked goods you have even seen! I had no idea Israel had such good food but we found some of the best chocolate chip cookies we've ever had and an amazing chocolate filled pastry called a Bureka that we couldn't get enough of!

The typical passerbys...Weird Al Yankovics "Amish paradise" kept popping up in my head the whole time we were there. The way they dressed just reminded me of Amish people. We actually spent family vacations visiting Amish country when I was a kid! For real. And it was awesome to observe.

Cute little boy and his dad - see his curly side burns too??

People are all over the streets and outdoor markets spot the city. Why can't America have more of these?!

This is the country of olives right?

As well as everything else!

The cookies were sooo delicious!! The first chocolate chip cookie I had had since we left on our travels...torture...but I definitely made up for lost time with these bad boys.

Just look at the colors of their fruits! Man I love exotic fruits and they have tons of them!

The Old City of Jerusalem is surrounded by old city walls that protect it. Now this city is OLD. Although the city walls have expanded over the years, the City of David which dates back to 2,000 BC was in that very spot. We went to the exact places where they actually have ruins from it that they speculate to be part of one of King David's homes.

The old city walls!

That's the old City of David behind me As well as lots of dirt

Some of the ruins of one of King Davids abodes. We are talking thousands and thousands of years old here! They even pointed out to us a part that they believe to have been the toilet of the house..haha! I love seeing details like that, makes it all seem even more real. And come on, who doesn't love to see a good old fashioned toilet seat? They should have museums fully dedicated for that stuff!

There's also an underground tunnell you can walk through called Hezekiahs tunnel that was built during King Hezekiahs time (600ish BC) it was a way for them to have additional water source since jerusalem always seemed to be in wars or getting captured by other countries and always under chaos and turmoil so you could never be too prepared. We did the walk through the tunnel which had water up to my thighs at times and a ceiling that Robby had to crouch to fit through!! It took about 40 minutes to get through the whole thing which was Claustrophobia central but it was so fun to do!

in hezekiahs tunnel!

It was pitch dark except his headlight and my cell phone...

And the occassional camera flash ;) at one point the water was mid-thigh I wish we had a pic of that!

Another thing about the Old City is that it is blatantly segregated. It is made up of four distant parts - the Jewish Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Muslim Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter. Each party believes the old city to contain Holy Land for one reason or another and believe that it strongly relates to them and are therefore essentially trying to stake their claim. It's such a small area too, probably 1 KM in diameter. But since they all have such different beliefs they keep it all pretty separate and each quarter feels completely different. Walking through the Jewish Quarter you see synagogues everywhere, lots of beards and yamacas and the authentic Jewish attire, you see people out praying and sometimes you can hear the loud singing and praying from the synagogues. Then you have the Muslim quarter which feels third world compared to the others - more run down and dirty, and of course the Muslim attire of head shawls and robes as well as the five time daily prayers over a loud speaker. The Christian Quarter is more Low key, marked by shops and different holy sites and churches in memorial of sacred things that happened there. The Armenian Quarter is very artsy with lots of elaborate churches and crazy colorful lights and lamps. So essentially you have four completely different worlds under one small roof, each separated by nothing more than a stone road but you can immediately see a difference when stepping into a new territory.

Inside the city walls. All the buildings look super old and are made of stone or brick. This is a snapshot from the Jewish quarter.

Inside the Western Wall of the Jewish quarter. This quarter and the Muslim quarter were way more obvious due to how the people dress. You'll see more pictures later.

Typical decor you'd see in the Armenian quarter, lots of cool looking lamps

Lots of amazing street food - this is in the Muslim quarter...they have bread stands everywhere! Robby blending right in.

You can walk on top of the old city walls to get a birds eye view of it all - they call it the Ramparts Walk and that is exactly what we did first then when we arrived.

So much to ponder up here, like why is that backpack so tiny?

Scaling the walls...making sure everything is secure

Showin off the calves

View from the top looking down into the city

More views inside the old city. the top gold dome is a Muslim mosque at the "Dome of the Mount" the spot where they say Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac (more on that later)