Yesterday we drove from Jerusalem into the Westbank, passing Jericho again and north-bound along the Jordan river up to the Sea of Galilee. Not much variety in the landscape, but still very interesting. When leaving the Westbank we had a proper car search, with dogs and everything. One can always see the mountains of Jordan in the east, as well as the quite wide no-man’s-land. About 70m was the closest we got to Jordan though. Unfortunately the Sea of Galilee as well as the drive to Zefad was a bit of a disappointment … anyways we ended up in Haifa in the end and hame some food and drinks in the student house of the Technion campus university. And now we’re up for work …

Just came back from a long day … the whole morning we were walking through all four quarters of the Old City in Jerusalem, passing by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall and many more places. After that and some quick lunch we drove to the Dead Sea to chill out in the extremely salty water (man it burns in scratches). With 420 meters below sea level the Dead Sea marks the lowest place on earth and has salinity of about 33% (the  Mediterranean has about 3.8%). After that, totally ignoring the warnings of the car rental place, we drove into Jericho. We walked around the city a bit, looked at seemingly the only thing to look at (a tree) and on our way back got invited to coffee and tea by some locals … after chatting for a bit I found out that one of them was housing Danish police officers training the Palestine ones recently … funny ey. Anyway now we are back to Jerusalem (so all is well with the car rental place :)) and are about to hit the old town again …

Yesterday we (Simon, Troels and me) arrived in Israel for a workshop to come in Haifa on Monday. After a some initial trouble with my hand luggage, which turned out to be 1,5 kg to heavy (the max is 8 kg at Cimber Sterling, ridiculous) and had to be checked in, I had a semi-pleasant four hours flight.

In Tel-Aviv airport we cued for an hour to get passed the border check and tried to get hold of the car we booked just yesterday, creating some confusion as we didn’t which company it would be with (was booked through some broker that hadn’t told us yet). Also we were in need for some food, which turned out quite difficult as everything was closing down at about three in the afternoon … yes, we didn’t know about Sabbath! Though I quickly remembered good old John Goodman from the best movie ever … The Big Lebowsky … nothing goes on Saturdays … and apparently you prepare for nothing goes quite in advance … anyways, also the train and busses in Jerusalem didn’t work, half for the city was locked down … quite an impression. Also the Jewish robes and hats left quite an impression … just like one knows from the movies.

Still we had a little walk, some Jerusalem Kebab (which turned out to be meatballs and sorted salad on a plate), and found some activity in the non-Jewish quarters in the old town.

Today we’ll have a proper city walk/tour and head out for Jericho and the dead sea afterwards …