My name is Tom Balabanov, I am a 45 year old man. My 19 year old daughter, Elizabeth asked me to take her to Egypt as a graduation present. As I have always wanted to go I agreed. I also added Israel as I was interested in visiting the biblical sites. Mentioned in the travelogue are my wife Yukari, my son Michael, my other daughter Diana, and my second son Tommy who passed away recently. We decided to spend 10 days traveling indepently in Israel, and connect to a 3 week tour of Egypt offered by The Imaginative Traveler for $1450CA. I used the 1997 LETS GO as a base for a lot of the independent travel.
I have shown a lot of the prices, maybe too much, as a guide to the costs while traveling.
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Tuesday, April 28
Vancouver to Frankfurt
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Elizabeth and I got a ride to the Vancouver International Airport at 2:30 pm. It was still lots of time for our 3:30 pm flight to Frankfurt on the way to Tel Aviv. We decided to look at the duty free shop at the airport to price some of the liquor. I figured that if we can only take one bottle each home from this expensive trip, it might as well be something expensive. I wrote down some of the prices.
At another store I decided to buy some postcards showing the scenery of Vancouver. It might come in handy showing some of the natives of Israel or Egypt where we lived. The only problem is that I didn't take any Canadian cash except a quarter and a roll of pennies. The quarter was for a phone call when we came back and the pennies were for giving away, when I was in Europe many people asked for Canadian coins and I didn't take any. The coins were also in the luggage on the plane. I used my credit card to buy them.
I asked for window seats as I like watching the scenery from the plane. We managed to get the seats 32A and 32B. These were by the emergency exits and had lots of leg room. 'Great!' I thought, until the flight was in the air and the non-stop line of washroom waiters lined up in front of us. They blocked the screen so I couldn't see the film or announcements. Fortunately I didn't find the film 'In and Out' very interesting.
The first meal they had was a chicken or beef selection. As Elizabeth is a vegetarian we asked about a vegetarian meal. The flight attendants said that should have been arranged beforehand. One mark against the travel agent, she said for a non-meat vegetarian it wasn't necessary. Oh well, She gave me her meat and I gave her me salmon salad. The chicken was not very memorable and they served a German rye bread that I did not find very appetizing, still the berry cake was good as was the cheese and grapes. I found the salmon salad slimy, so I didn't miss that.
The second movie, 'The Mad City ', was better than the first, but I still had to contend with the washroom lineup, especially just after a meal. Lufthansa passed around OJ or mineral water several times. Several times I had to ask people in the lineup to move aside.
At about 10:20pm Vancouver time we got to see the sun come up. Unfortunately there was a solid cloud mass below us so we had no idea of where we were until we got close to Germany. By that time they passed around the second meal, a breakfast of sausage, eggs, bun, fruit and yogurt. This meal was much better, Elizabeth gave me her sausage. During breakfast I talked to the man in the next seat (32C). He was meeting a sister in Frankfurt and was traveling with her to visit family in Holland.
Frankfurt was 12c and cloudy when we arrived at about 10am.
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Wednesday, April 29
Frankfurt to Jerusalem
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We had a 2-3 hour layover in Frankfurt. There wasn't quite enough time to leave the airport and visit the city, but enough time to get bored. By our Vancouver time it was past midnight, but we knew that our short nap in the airplane was all we would have until we arrive at the hotel in Jerusalem. We filled the time by visiting the duty free and the shops. I priced the liquor. It was a bit more expensive then the Vancouver duty free. The shops were expensive! An apple for about $2CA, crackers for $5CA, a large chocolate bar for $9CA. I still weren't very hungry from eating the meals on the plane, so I didn't buy anything and neither did Elizabeth. I saw a display of Rolex watches ranging from $3000 to about $40,000 each. I estimated that this one display cabinet had over one million dollars of Rolex watches. Some of the perfume looked interesting, I told the shopkeeper that I might get some on the way back.
We went through to the Tel Aviv gate (number 68) early. It was quite crowded. There also was a different type of clientele. Most of the Vancouver-Frankfurt were Germans dressed in a western style, Many of this flight were Arab or Israeli and dressed quite different. The security was also tighter, we went through another checkout and they restricted carry-on to one bag each. We had about a 10 minute delay before leaving. We left on a smaller plane, lifting off the runway with a bit of a crosswind.
We had a salmon or chicken dinner once in the air. The lady in the next seat was from Paris and was visiting her boyfriend, a physicist in Tel Aviv, an event she goes through for a few weeks, every few months. She pays about 2400Fr for the tickets from Paris to Tel Aviv return. The sky was still cloudy most of the way so I only saw the ground when we were about to land. We didn't park at a gate when landing, instead were loaded onto a bus to be driven to the airport terminal. I would presume this has to do with security, although Ben Gurion Airport seemed much smaller then I expected. Customs was uneventful except the unaccustomed (as of yet) of the proliferation of Uzi's. We cashed $200.00CA at the airport exchange at a pretty bad rate as we found out the next day. Referring to my LET'S GO book, I located the bus depot and we were on our way to Jerusalem for 18.50 Shekels per. By this time it was about 8pm local time, 10am Vancouver time, so I was starting to feel tired and looking forward to a comfy bed. By about 9pm we got to the Jerusalem bus station. I referred to my LET'S GO map of Jerusalem to find where our hotel was. With our backpacks on we headed down a street that I thought would lead to Agripa Street. After a few blocks the street layout didn't agree with the map and we were lost. Not all streets were marked in English and they curved so it was difficult to figure out where we were. Finally giving up my self-reliance I asked some people heading to what seemed to be the downtown area, how to get to Agripa Street. They asked some other people and then took us there. On the way we encountered hundreds of young people heading in roughly the same direction.
We checked into the hotel, Hotel Palatin, $80US per night including breakfast, a not very good hotel with dingy bathrooms, with pretensions to high class. Another mark against the travel agent. I had asked for a cheap hotel for the first 2 nights, so I don't have to search for something that late, not a dingy hotel that was expensive. It had a phone, and a TV with no English channels.
After unloading everything we decided to see what everyone was doing in the streets, ever though it was a long day for us. We continued down the road towards the center of town. There were thousands of young people. We found that they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel. I knew there were some celebrations before I left but I didn't know how they would affect us or what would happen. As it turned out most businesses and banks would be closed for the next 4 days causing a few wrinkles in our plans. For now though we joined the celebrations, bands were performing in the street, people were buying spray cans of soap foam and colored streamers and spraying everyone, including us as well. We watched people dancing traditional dances and singing what appeared to be patriotic songs in Hebrew. Everywhere there were army youth's carrying Uzi's, as we traveled it became an accustomed sight as all males have a 3 year military service, all females a 2 year service. After some time in the celebrations we then headed back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.
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Thursday, April 30
Jerusalem's old city
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The hotel had a very elaborate breakfast of cereal, eggs, tomatoes cucumbers, bread, bread, cheese, juice and tea and coffee. All very fresh. I was not expecting to eat fresh vegetables and fruits, I may gain weight instead of I was expecting to lose weight during the trip.
After breakfast I phoned home via CANADA DIRECT, no problem. I also phoned a couple of hotels in old Jerusalem that were where I wanted to stay near the Damascus Gate I checked Al Hashimi and the Tabasco Hostel from the LETS GO guide. We walked to the old city, located the Damascus gate in the map and located the two hostels. We took a look at Al Hashimi inside and then Tabasco. Tabasco is a backpacker's hostel with only a couple double rooms and was next to a tea house with night entertainment. It looked very noisy. Al Hashimi is a very clean simple hotel with in room bathroom. We picked Al Hashimi for 75 Shekels per night. It was about $23US per night less that 1/3 the price of the Palatin hotel. We reserved the Al Hashimi for the following night with a $5US deposit. It was too late to change hotels today I figured.
After this chore was done we started to tour the city. We first visited the souks, then we headed down the Christian Quarter to the Church of the Holy Redeemer (Lutheran) where for 1.5 shekels we climbed to the top and took pictures of the sights around the city. In from of the church hawkers sold us some postcards. We then visited the Church of the Holy Sepulture. The Church of the Holy Sepulture is suppose to be where Christ was nailed to the cross, crucified and put in a tomb. The church inside was extremely elaborate.
We waited in a lineup to enter a small but very elaborate room inside where Christ was suppose to be entombed. We also wandered around the various crypts and locations of note within the church.
Once outside we wandered around the shops until we got to the Jewish Quarter. We saw the Cardo, a Roman age ruin, and some archeological diggings of the first temple period about 1000BC. We then had lunch at a restaurant stand, ice cream was as expensive as a falafel, at about $3CA each. After lunch we continued to the Western Wall of the Temple, going through a metal detector and bag inspector. When we tried to go to the closest side of the Wall the attendant said there was a men's side and a women's side of the wall.
After visiting the Wall, we went north to try to find the way to the Dome of the Rock. We didn't manage to find the visitors entrance and found that it was not open until 3:30pm anyway, 2 hours later. So we continued north to the Via Dolorosa area . At the first station of the cross a man came up to us and started talking about the stations of the cross. By now we knew a bit about it, but he was explaining quite a bit. |
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