Foto Friday – Visit Israel the Virtual Way
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Travel
“Snob! Have you been to Tiberias yet?” The late great Israeli humorist Ephraim Kishon quipped that those words were scrawled across the Acropolis, chastising those Israelis who preferred to travel abroad rather than tour their own fair country. Today, fortunately, Israelis — and anyone else for that matter — can sit in the air-conditioned comfort of their Athens hotel and visit the sites of Israel in full color — thanks to a new feature on the Ministry of Tourism website: the Virtual Tour of Israel. The new multimedia experience includes 100 videos, 130 panoramic views and dozens of photographs. Here’s a classic:
Ten virtual, ten-day tours are available online, including: general interest itineraries, Jewish interest, Christian interest, Culture and History, Nature, Family, Archeology, Active interest, Mobility challenged and — last but certainly not least — Food and Wine.
Sites that can be visited include Caesarea… Jerusalem… Mitzpe Ramon… the Dead Sea…
The Bauhaus architecture of Tel Aviv …
Here’s Tiberias – we are not snobs!
The Haifa Port, where my running club, the Holyland Hash House Harriers, will be running this weekend with 40 sailors on shore leave!
By the way, the Ministry of Tourism website is available in 11 languages and is updated on an ongoing basis.
Among the wildflowers
As Rachel wrote last week, wildflowers are in full bloom as the “rainy season” ends. The Modi’in area is saturated with beautiful flowers and one of the city’s greatest treasures is Givat Titora, a 140 acre green space with hiking trails, ruins, cisterns is currently the city’s main attraction and a popular spot for locals. Shockingly, contractors have been trying to get a hold of this land for years to build apartments. This site, set up to oppose construction on Titora, outlines the rich history of the hill. Titora is one of Modi’in’s greatest assets and the very thought of construction there sickens me.
On Friday I took my daughter to Titora for what we call an “adventure” – which is my way of branding something that she might not be able to get her head around. Right before her nap I told her when she awakens we were going to go smell the flowers. She was pretty stoked when she got up and starting screaming “FLOWERS! FLOWERS!” so I immediately threw her (well, placed her actually) in the car and took off! Here are a couple of photos from the afternoon.
A 5-hour vacation at the Dead Sea
One way to stay afloat in Israel..
Having not been away together in ages, and no chance on the horizon, my wife and I identified a quick window yesterday, and scooted an hour down the Dead Sea to the Ein Bokek strip of hotels. We had some discount ticket for the Ganim Hotel, and ‘checked in’ at around 10:30 am.
They give you a ticket for their spa, coupon for cake and cofee in the lounge, and entry to the dining room for a sumptuous buffet lunch. What could be finer? Instead of a room, you get a locker with a key in the changing room, where you can store your stuff, and shower.
The spa included a number of options – two indoor Dead Sea pools, filled with the minerals and aromas we’ve come to know and love; a couple indoor jacuzzis, a decent-sized gym with a number of contraptions, and a huge, Olympic-sized outdoor pool. All the other stuff, like massages, Dead Sea mud treatments, etc.. cost extra.
Most of the other guests – those actually paying to stay in the hotel, and those like us, who parachuted in for the day – were on the other side of 60. And they succeeded in making us feel both young and thin.
After an hour and a half switching back and forth between the Dead Sea pools and the jacuzzi, we layed back in the recliners by the outdoor fresh water pool in the 75 degree Farenheit sun and read for a while, munching on our cake and coffee.
The outdoor pool was a bit nippy for us, but there were some gallant souls doing laps. Instead, we worked up an appetite for lunch by taking a walk along the beach and checking out some of the shopping tourist traps along Ein Bokek.
Naturally, I stuffed myself at lunch, with a number of entrees and salads to gorge on. And by mid-afternoon, we were headed back home, totally relaxed and reinvigorated by our 5-hour vacation.
And it looks like I’ll be headed back there sooner than I thought. When I arrived home, I realized that I still had the key to my locker in my pocket. Big deal, right? However, I had given in my ID card (teudat zehut) to get the key.
So Ganim Hotel, here we come again.
Milo, the Israeli wonder dog
Milo says Rami Levy is better than Mister Zol
Ever since it opened a few years ago, despite its location in the desert, Rami Levy has become a welcome alternative to the more crowded and cramped Mister Zol, located in our local mall with parking problems.
Upon leaving the supermarket after stalking up, she encountered one of the Bedouin staff people holding a box next to the row of grocery carts. And inside the box was one of the cutest, smallest puppies she had ever seen.
“I found it,” said the worker. “Someone left six of them to die off in the desert, but I was able to only save this one. I don’t think he’s doing very well.”
How cruel. How sad. How I’m going to pay for this. The dog was breathing slightly, had matted hair and closed eyes. That image about did it for my wife.
We once had a dog, but had given it away after six years due to the overwhelming responsibilities of a new baby in the house. And ever since, we had felt guilty about it, even though she went to a warm, loving home.
Given the choice of saving the life of this puppy, or likely letting him die, my wife scooped him up and brought him home. And that’s how Milo came to live with us.
The idea was to nurse him back to health, and then find a good home for him. Well, the health part worked out great. Milo’s robust and playful. But it’s been five months now, and he’s still with us.
My wife’s mitzva of saving a life has turned us into reluctant dog owners once again. So, if there’s anyone out there – even you, that one Israelity reader in Honduras – that wants to continue the mitzvah trail, let us know. We’ll get Milo to you somehow.
Israeli wine buying season – even on a budget
The weeks leading up to Passover represent the lion’s share of the kosher wine industry’s annual sales. Just like December is the peak season for general retail revenues every year, post-Purim early spring is where it’s at for kosher wine transaction volume. Young wines from the fall harvest are starting to be bottled and marketed at this time, and those handling the wine buying for a Seder must procure enough for the proverbial four cups consumed by each participant as part of the Haggadah’s rituals, meaning around one full bottle per person – plus whatever’s consumed separately during the meal.
And just as consumer retail columnists formulated analyses and advice columns this past December, focusing on how to make solstice holiday purchases where one garners maximum bang for one’s buck in today’s tough economic climate, Ha’aretz‘s renowned wine critic Daniel Rogov recently released a highly practical guide to affordable spring 2009 kosher Israeli wines:
For several years, knowledgeable wine drinkers have known that the best buys in the country were the Tabor, Galil Mountain and Dalton wineries as well as in the Gamla series of the Golan Heights Winery. Those wines are now being joined by wines from the Zion winery and, while those may not make for the most sophisticated drinking, they do offer excellent value.
He goes on to rate nine kosher Zion winery (their Hebrew-only official site) products, all of which falling well within his “good to very good” stratum of scoring.
Rogov is getting out there more and more nowadays, serving as a formidable advocate of Israeli oenophilia. I’ve written about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV before, and the enthusiastic eccentric personality also seemingly has Passover fever nowadays, having welcomed Rogov himself recently on the program (check out the fascinating 38-minute episode here). The banter-laden rapport between the two alone makes the video worth watching.
To Israeli wine lovers like you and me, this is not all big news (the fact that kosher wine no longer exclusively resembles cough syrup, and the fact that great Israeli wine is not exclusively kosher – we’ve known these things for years), but it’s great to see more and more mainstream wine-oriented media channels recognizing the quality coming out of this part of the world.
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