The longest day

I am writing this blog from the hotel room we are staying at near London Stansted Airport, the airport we are using to fly to Venice in the morning. It’s 9:00pm and I haven’t slept more than a couple 15 minutes snoozes since the night before the last, 36 hours ago. I’m sleepy and this blog might be more bibble babble then useful or entertaining.

Before getting into why I am still up, allow me to cap off our very wonderful time spent in the Middle East. We got up fairly casually Wednesday. We didn’t have a huge agenda for the day. Just wanted to make one more jaunt to the OC to see the Dome of the Rock up close, look for a pair of cheap shoes for Kris to make up for the ones that got lost, take pictures of the Western Wall and take in the markets and OC bustle and unique spirit one last time. Well 3 for 4. The Dome of the Rock ended up being closed for tourists that day, so a couple minutes spent disappointed, we moved on with the day. As is becoming usual, we walked more then we intended to, at one point descending a massive hill, then ascending the same hill to look for something we ended up not doing anyways (Hezekiah’s tunnel) Oh well. We made our way past, first, the Zion Gate and I got an upclose disturbing view of it’s swiss cheese nature, the product of a barrage of bullet holes from the city’s invasion and killings in ’48 before heading to the Jaffa Gate and some much needed caffeine at Aroma’s. We ended our time in the city successfully snagging our knick-knacks and Kris’s shoes before taking the bus back to our friend’s house. We figured this was, unofficially, the end of our time in Jerusalem and the ME. What we didn’t count on was our friend’s landlord inviting us up for a traditional Ramadan evening feast, which included a 35 pound sheep she paid 2000 shekels to have completely prepared for the meal. The platter resembled the one Chevy Chase used to sled down the hill in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Ridiculous! The experience itself was awesome, another great example of Arab hospitality. After stuffing ourselves on food we did NOT need, we stole away to finish packing and head to the airport for our early morning flight.

So what has kept me up for 36 hours? Our flight out of Tel Aviv was at 5:10 so instead of waking up our friend at 2:00 to get a ride or waking up then to take an expensive Sheirut, we got a ride the night before. Before reaching the terminal, we were “treated” to a surprising and fairly nerve wrecking detainment for 20 minutes at the entrance to the airport. This included a search of everything we had, a steady series of questions and a whole load of stickers pock-marking our belongings. (The “adventures” just keep coming…) Got to the airport, said our goodbyes to our wonderful friend and waited for 3.5 hours before we could check in. Before we finally did, we were subjected to a very thorough security search as well as another one after checking in. (At this point we were ready to leave this antsy country) Another 20 miles of rooms, hallways, checkpoints with more stickers and ramps later we finally reached our gate. To wait another 2 hours. Got on the flight (very annoyingly crammed for space…) and made our way for Riga, Latvia. Well Latvia, in all of their efficiency, made a bunch of us wait in a small area for over an hour just to give us a ride of roughly 70 yards to our gate to check in for our second flight at 11:30. Maybe they failed to notice we all had 2 legs, but I digress. We touched at London Gatwick to great relief and purchased our two bus tickets: one to take us to central London station and the other to get us to London Stansted. Very much finally we made it to our hotel, graciously purchased for us by Kris’s parents and after GOBS of time in transition, settled in.

It’s now almost 10 and I have to be up at 3:30 to get ready for our early flight to Venice. It is not smart that I am writing this right now. But I have committed to keeping the masses up to date on our journeys. By masses, I mean all 10 of you kind enough to read this.  More soon…

Pictures: Marketplace pita-making, the colors of the vendors, me at the Western Wall (Dad, does this pose look familiar???)