Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, is a lazy half-day’s drive north of Ein Bokek, a hotel zone on the Dead Sea. Yes, an easy half-day along Highway 90, even if you get a late start, never drive faster than 50 m.p.h. and make stops to see the archeological sites at Qumran and Beit She’an.
But I can’t be dogmatic about exactly how far apart the two places are. My rental car’s odometer put the distance at 101 miles; a touring map counted it as 115 miles. As with so many circumstances in this land, there are two opinions at the very least–even on something as seemingly straightforward, as inherently void of controversy, as mileage.
Place names are another example. Many locations have at least two or three: one in Hebrew, one in Arabic and one in whatever language a visitor might speak.
So, by the time you read this, I will have spent 11 nights in Israel/Palestine, passed twice through Tel Aviv/Tel Habib, prowled most of the lanes in the Old City of Yerushalayim/Al-Qods/Jerusalem and watched the sunrise over the Yam Kinneret/Sea of Galilee.
As I write this story, I’m looking out over the Sea of Galilee from Room 1213 of the Sheraton hotel in Tverya/Tiberias. It’s the middle of April, and though things can happen here (or anywhere) in the week before this finally reaches print, this will be my version of what it feels like to travel in this part of the world right now.
To be sure, an endless succession of books and travel guides describes the facts of major sites–you already know what they are, anyway–and recommends hotels. You can read from now till Doomsday (or should I say Armageddon?) endless facts and theories about who did what, when and where. There’s about 5,000 years’ worth of that here.
But I’ve always believed that the most urgent part of my job is to communicate the intangibles, tell you what a place feels like, explore its personality, take its emotional pulse, so that you can then decide whether it’s a trip that would fit your own comfort zone, whether it’s one you’d enjoy spending your time and money to take. I do that best when I travel solo, and so I came here, as I have to so many other places, alone.
After I arrived, I signed up for a guided bus tour making a day trip to overlook the Bahai Gardens in Haifa, study the remains of Herod the Great’s Caesarea, tour the crusader-era fortress at Akko/Acre and walk through the sea caves of Rosh Hanikra at the Lebanese border.
I took a private guided walking tour of Jerusalem that included the City of David, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, Mt. Moriah/the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif, and stops at several Stations of the Cross in the Moslem and Christian Quarters.
I hired a taxi driver, and through him a private guide, to take me to Bethlehem and see the Churches–there’s more than one on the spot–of the Nativity. I also walked the Old City on my own. And I rented a car to drive alone to the Dead Sea, Nazareth and Galilee, visiting Masada, Capernaum, the Mount of Beatitudes, the tomb of the 12th Century Rabbi Maimonides/Rambam in Tiberias and the 2,000-year-old Jewish fishing boat at Nof Ginnosar.
That’s not the complete list, but my point is that I got around a lot of the country in a lot of ways in 10 days. Not only have I, a woman traveling alone, made the trip without incident–and on my first time here, mind you–but my life is now richer for having come; for I also believe that once you take a trip, it’s yours forever. The sound of prayers mixing with birdsong at the Western Wall, the soft golden glow from the Dome of the Rock, the choice of two crucifixion/empty tomb locations, the dramatic descent from the Judean Desert down to the Dead Sea, the ancient mosaic tile floors in dozens of churches and synagogues and Roman ruins, the flowers simply everywhere in Tiberias . . .
Still, I won’t kid you. Israel/Palestine isn’t entirely pleasant. The shore of the Dead Sea’s hotel zone is littered with cigarette butts. Traffic is so compacted and parking so scarce in Nazareth that I gave up on trying to visit the Church of the Annunciation. That day trip to Caesarea and Haifa I mentioned was on a United Tours mini-bus so crowded that when the man wedged beside me laughed, it was my belly that jiggled; and on the return we were delayed for an hour in traffic in Tel Aviv because a suspicious package was found in the street and had to be examined. Fortunately, it didn’t contain explosives.
Non-Muslims aren’t allowed to enter the Dome of the Rock or Al-Aqsa Mosque. Pickpockets are a real problem on the Mount of Olives. Some shopkeepers in the Old City tried to physically block me from leaving their stores when I declined to make a purchase. And then there’s The Wall, a concrete monster separating Israeli and Palestinian areas that brought tears to my eyes when I entered Bethlehem.
It’s not for everyone. No place is. And no one can predict what events may unfold here on any given day. Bente Jonas, my David Tours guide through the Jewish Quarter, said she moved from Denmark in the late 1960s and has never known times so tense as now. As we talked, the Sunday was fast approaching on which perhaps thousands of Jewish activists were expected to march on Mt. Moriah. Word was that Muslims were preparing to counter such a move.
Ultimately the standoff was thwarted, but it goes to show that even though Jerusalem may be united geographically, it’s a long way from being united ideologically. People around here still behave as if East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem are separate and distinct entities.
The taxi driver who picked me up at 1 a.m. at Ben Gurion Airport would take me only so far in Jerusalem, claiming he’d never heard of the American Colony Hotel, though it is one of the two most prominent hotels in the city. He even called the hotel on his cell phone for directions. Then he transferred me and my bags to another cab whose driver was better acquainted with “that part of the city.” The first cabbie even paid the second cabbie out of the $50 fare I had agreed to. The second cabbie confirmed that the first had charged me a fair price, saying that a dishonest driver would have demanded twice as much at such an hour. Still, it was all very strange.
If I’d come here on an organized tour, I’d have missed/been spared that bit of local color. I could say the same of my cab ride to Bethlehem, a trip of some 15 minutes from the YMCA Three Arches Hotel, which is right across the street from the famous, and famously expensive, King David Hotel.
I was transferring by taxi from the $230-per-night American Colony (East Jerusalem) to the $70-per-night YMCA Three Arches (West Jerusalem)–the better to evaluate hotels in various price ranges and locations–and asked the driver about going to Bethlehem.
These days, the only way to go to Bethlehem by motor coach is if you are already part of an organized tour group; at the moment no half-day bus tours are operating. And you can’t drive there yourself if you’ve rented from one of the big-name car companies because they don’t want their vehicles entering the “pink zones,” a euphemism that Budget Rental Car, at least, uses for the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Gaza. Kfir Guy, the rental agent at Budget’s location next to the King David Hotel, told me that it’s simply not a good idea to drive a car with Israeli tags into these areas.
Anyway, back to the cab driver: Faisal Abedeyah, born in Bethlehem and currently living in East Jerusalem, had the proper papers to enter; not just any cab can go there, I’m told. He said he could drive me round-trip and pay for the registered guide himself, all for $50. That sounded like a bargain, seeing as how the American Colony’s tour desk quoted a private car and driver at $120 for half a day and another $120 to throw in a guide.
Considering that Bethlehem is just over the hill from Jerusalem, and that it’s a one-tourist-site town, half a day is too much time to spend there, especially now that tourists are so scarce.
There were so few visitors inside the Churches of the Nativity that even inside the basilica I could hear the Muslim call to prayer from the mosque way on the opposite side of the city square. My guide, Nidal al-Korna, said that before the intifada, people were lined up for 30 minutes or longer to descend the steps to Jesus’ birthplace. Under current circumstances, I found myself waiting a few minutes for other tourists to come along so that I could have people in my photographs.
Other renowned locations around the country are pleasantly uncrowded. At Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the line was scarcely five minutes long to enter the empty tomb. At Capernaum, I practically had St. Peter’s House and The White Synagogue all to myself.
It’s bit of a hobby that I look for other Americans when I travel abroad; I like to know where they’re traveling from. At Masada, I ran into a Christian tour group from Atlanta; in Jerusalem a Christian group from California was just finishing a three-week tour.
I also talked with couples traveling on their own from southern Indiana, Florida and New York–all of whom were either mixing pleasure with business or had been here many times before and knew their way around.
Even celebrities were here. I watched Sir Ben (“Gandhi”) Kingsley affix his name to the wall of distinguished guests at the American Colony Hotel. I spotted Barbara Walters at dinner one evening, also at the American Colony.
So not everyone is worried about coming here. Americans (OK, you probably can’t count Ben Kingsley) are traveling to Israel/Palestine. But during my time here, hardly in great numbers. No hotel I’ve tried has been booked up, and all the ones I’ve checked into are running specials. Hotel restaurants are far from capacity at breakfast, even though every hotel includes breakfast in the room rate. Gift shops at national parks such as Masada and Qumran and Beit She’an are selling Dead Sea cosmetic kits two-for-one. Shopkeepers, even those who’ve put price tags on their goods, are desperate to haggle. And Highway 90 from Ein Bokek to Tiberias isn’t heavily traveled.
If any place in this land is flush with visitors these days, it’s back in Jerusalem at the Western Wall, and the women’s side seemingly more so than the men’s. If you’re like me, you’ve only seen pictures and footage of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish men at the wall. Their attire makes for striking photos. But I’m more moved to see so many women–not a bare midriff or plunging neckline in the lot–scripture books in hand, whispering, bowing, weeping, waiting for a break in the crowd so that they, too, can touch the stones and leave their prayers behind. As they exit, the most devout walk backwards.
Beneath the Western Wall to the north, excavated chambers and tunnels give a glimpse into the elaborate infrastructure of Judaism’s Second Temple. Follow the tunnel to its end, and you’ll emerge in the Moslem Quarter at what 2,000 years ago was the Antonia Fortress, the Roman garrison at the Temple Mount where Jesus was tried by Pontius Pilate. Now it’s the First Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa.
Up above the Western Wall, little boys kick soccer balls around the grounds and little girls push baby carriages up the steps. Families have their pictures made in front of the Dome of the Rock or Al-Aqsa Mosque, both places where the Prophet Muhammad came and went.
With so many natural, historical, cultural, architectural and spiritual treasures, Israel/Palestine ought to be a happy place. I didn’t encounter the legendarily gruff Israeli manner–maybe you have to stay in Tel Aviv to get that–but neither did I notice many locals smiling or laughing. At times, I myself felt a sense of heaviness pulling at me, as if I were slogging knee deep in water. It bothers me that I can’t put my finger on why.
As I’ve gone around the country, I’ve experienced some things that I couldn’t get used to: seeing soldiers, both in and out of uniform, riding buses or ordering lunch or waiting in restroom lines, but always wearing side arms as if they were fanny packs and rifles as casually as if they were backpacks; getting told politely but firmly by guards that an area was “closed” when other people clearly were entering; being waved through security checks at some roadblocks and asked to open the car trunk at others; having to keep up with the Jewish/Muslim/Christian/English names for all these places.
All in all, a complicated place, complicated city, complicated country. But not impossible. A place where bad things happen? Sometimes, but for perspective you ought to look up the police statistics for, say, New Orleans. I don’t have the numbers in front of me right now, but New Orleans has one of America’s highest per-capita rates for violent crimes, and yet I’ve never heard of anyone saying they were afraid to vacation there.
There’s so much more I want to tell you about this place. But newspaper travel stories have to fit space constraints and meet deadlines, and I’m fast approaching the limits of both.
For those who’ve never traveled here before, Israel/Palestine is probably best experienced as part of an organized group. I’m convinced that this is one destination where group tour members will get something meaningful out of their trip that I didn’t. Many groups that travel to Israel/Palestine come with a common purpose; and participants are freed from concerning themselves with the heavy lifting of travel–finding hotel rooms, wrestling with maps, confirming opening hours, keeping enough cash on hand for admission fees, putting out fires, getting from Point A to Point B and perhaps to points such as Megiddo, Eilat, Mitzpa Ramon, Jericho and Hebron that I wanted to visit but ran out of time.
I’ll have to save those for another trip. Like everyone else, even a travel writer has to come home.
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IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
There are no non-stop flights between Chicago and Tel Aviv. Continental and the Israeli airline El Al have non-stop service from New York; El Al and Air Canada have non-stop service from Toronto. Or you can make connections in Europe with European carriers. Fares begin at about $900.
GETTING AROUND
If you’re with an organized group tour, problem solved. If you are renting a car, you can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $47/day, as I did, for a compact automatic with air conditioning. Major rental companies such as Hertz, Avis and Budget serve Israel. So do a number of local companies.
Cab fares in Jerusalem seem on a par with those in Chicago for similar distances. Just be sure that the driver turns on the meter before heading off. Or you can negotiate a price off the meter. In that case, be sure to specify whether the amount is in U.S. dollars or Israeli shekels.
CASH AND BANKING
U.S. dollars are universally accepted. Prices on hotel rooms, rental cars and souvenirs are routinely quoted and billed in U.S. dollars. ATMs dispense your choice of shekels or dollars, but finding an ATM can be a challenge. Most hotels don’t have one, so you’ll need to ask your tour guide or hotel concierge for the closest bank with an ATM. Beware of anyone on the street or in the bazaars who offers to take you to an ATM–a proposition that has trouble written all over it.
Exchange rate varies from 4 to 4.5 shekels to the dollar, depending on the place.
WHAT TO WEAR
Most places it’s OK to dress the same way you do at home. But modest attire is required at all religious sites. For women, that means no shorts or short skirts, no bare midriffs, no exposed cleavage. For men, no shorts or sleeveless tank tops.
WHAT TO EAT
If it looks good, smells inviting, then try it. Just like you would at home. I ate everything from a pita sandwich bought from a street vendor to veal medallions flamed at my table, with no ill effect.
WHERE TO STAY
If you’re with a group, you may not have a choice. But if your tour offers a choice, or you are traveling on your own, hotels don’t come any better than the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem (www.theamericancolony.com), one of the top hotels in the world, according to Conde Nast’s Gold List, and a member of Relais & Chateaux. It’s the sort of place that has shaded courtyards and sets out fruit in the breezeways. Prices start at $175/night. At the other end of the price spectrum, rooms at Jerusalem’s YMCA Three Arches (www.ymca3arch.co.il) are clean and functional, with large bathrooms. Prices start at $70/night. Both hotels are in historic buildings and within a 15-minute walk of the Old City.
TOUR COMPANIES
Several tour operators can customize trips for church and synagogue groups. For people who prefer tours that already are planned, one of the most well-known operators is IsramWorld (800-223-7460; www.isram.com), which offers guaranteed departures year-round, lasting from 7 to 13 nights. Itineraries range from secular to religious, with several bar/bat-mitzvah programs. Land-only prices start at $1,480 and include many meals and a choice of hotels.
INFORMATION
Israel Ministry of Tourism, 800 2nd Ave., New York, NY 10017; 888-77ISRAEL; www.goisrael.com
— Toni Stroud
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tstroud@tribune.com
