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Time for the fourth, and last, batch of photos from the trip.

On the Friday we went up (which is the correct term even though we went southwards, I promise) to Jerusalem. We only had time to see the Old City, but that’s OK since I think it’s the main attraction.

The mosque in these pictures is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is Islam’s third holiest place. The valley to the right is Gehenna, a.k.a. hell, but it doesn’t seem too bad, at least not in daylight.

I like the bling of this here cowboy. Probably a rapper of some sort.

The Western Wall is the holiest place in Judaism. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is to the right in this picture, so it’s all a bit cramped. It’s OK to visit the wall as tourist, but you have to make sure to cover your head.

In the Old City it’s quite markety with lots of booths, people and salesmen. We had the very good timing of going there just when the Muslims flooded the streets on the way to the Friday prayer, which made it nigh impossible to move upstream.

One of the main Christian sites is Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It’s very dark and I find it a bit creepy, but it’s important to a lot of pilgrims. Although it doesn’t look that bad on the pictures to me:

Outside the Damascus Gate they sell a lot of bread, mish mash, and pink shoes.

Cue random pictures, also from the Old City:

The day after we went up insanely early to go to Sachne. It’s a natural spring which is the perfect place to go for a swim. If you’re in the area, do yourself a favour and drop by:

And that’s basically it. At least as far as my pictures go. All the pictures can be found here. All in all I had the most excellent time this time around as well.

THE END.

First a leftover from yesterday:

And this is photo from the other day when I went to Camden to listen to some brilliant music. I haven’t thought about this issue before, but I’m glad someone brought it to my attention. There is probably a petition to sign somewhere or a Facebook goup to join. Get involved!

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Continued exploring the Thames eastwards a bit today. Started out in Gravesend and ended up in Gillingham. There aren’t a lot of footing on the path by the public, but thee are several lots of fishermen, drift rubbish, and an assortment of ATVs, dirt bikes and mini motos. It is also quite nice and naturey.

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For weeks on end I’ve planned to go to Dover, but for one reason or another I haven’t managed. Until yesterday that is. Unfortunately I didn’t get there until quite late during the day, but it was well compensated by very nice white cliffs.

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The second day with the rental car we went northwards:

First stop Capernaum, with is a ruin at the north part of Sea of Galilee. It’s also a holy place so you need to leave your shorts and weapons outside:

Next up a the town Metula at the northern border close to Lebanon:

After that we continued to the Golan Heights, which has a lot of nice scenery, greenery and what not. The main stop was The Valley of Tears where the Yom Kippur War played out. It’s quite nice as places go, but it has too many mines to be a good place for picnic:

After a lot of driving we went for a swim in the Sea of Galilee and then went back to Netanya:

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We spent the Tuesday relaxing in Netanya, which isn’t such a bad thing since they have a really nice beach:

The day after we got ourselves a rental car. Rental cars are quite nifty because normal cars rarely fit in the overhead compartment on the plane, and the airport security people normally don’t let you bring them onboard because they are too large for the x-ray and contain a lot of dangerous liquids. But the main reason is that I don’t have a normal car, so a rental car was the only option.

First up was a town called Sderot. Even though Sderot feels like any sleepy small town it is very close to Gaza and they get an awful lot of rockets from there. And being so close they only have 15 seconds to get into a shelter. Thankfully there weren’t any rockets while we were there:

After a short stop for coffee in Ber-Sheba we continued out in the desert towards the Dead Sea. Last time I fell in love with the desert, and it still continued to amaze me.

The plan was to go up to Masada. And when I say “the plan was” you know that it didn’t happen. Given that is was Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) they decided to close an hour earlier than what they said in the phone the day before. Oh well, we looked at it from the ground a bit before we headed towards the Dead Sea:

Floating in the Dead Sea is quite nice and surreal. And the water is saltier than salt liquorice, which makes it hurt more when you get it in you eye (not that I have ever gotten salt liquorice in my eye, but I have pretty good imagination if I may say so myself):

We then headed off back to Ber-Sheba, but had to stop on the way back to admire the view:

In Ber-Sheba we celebrated Rosh Hashanah with honey and apples as you are supposed to, which was very nice.

I got this crazy idea to write text on this blog thingie, you know instead of just pictures. I’m quite convinced I’m the first who have thought of the idea and that it’s a million dollar homepage kind of an idea. But since I’m such a nice guy and don’t like patents it’s hereby released free to the world. I think it might take off. You heard it here first.

One benefit of using words in addition, or instead of, pictures is that it’s sometimes easier to get something across. Typing also makes it easier to remember where those pesky ‘y’ and ‘u’ keys are located. Much in the same way as someone who knows Chinese needs to speak Chinese once in a while as to not forget how to say “good morning” and “could you please get my strech limo and a donkey”.

Anyhow the topic of today is my trip to Israel the other week. This was actually my second trip (you can read all the gory details of the first one over here), as Israel trips go, so I had some sort of idea what I was in for.

I started out the trip with an all nighter at Heathrow. Now spending a night at Heathrow isn’t exactly what I spend my whole days longing for. Especially not since I had to check in in the bang middle of the night. But armed with a laptop and an interesting programming problem I was never even near falling asleep.

I arrived at the thirty degree Tel Avivian summer around three during the Saturday. My dear mate Daniel (a Swede who lives in Israel) picked me up at the airport, and then I spent the most of the rest of the day recouping and relaxing in Netanya. My brother Mattias arrived around midnight so we went back to the airport in Tel Aviv to pick him up.

This is the beach in Netanya in the evening:

I spent the Sunday having migrain. There are things I enjoy less, but still it wasn’t too enjoyable. However, I managed to paparazzi Mattias and Daniel as they were talking to the very nice neighbour upstairs before I got sick:

The day after we went to Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv, if you don’t know, is a city with nice buildings, lego gangstas who profess their love publically, and a very nice beach:

After a nice swim in a “stormy” Mediterranean Sea we continued to Jaffa. Jaffa is a nice old town which is well worth a visit. And it’s for free, so good value for money. You can stand around waiting for a bat scaring you into Batman, and look at trees on fire:

You can also look at the extraordinary view of Tel Aviv and nice lighthouses:

But most of all Jaffa has a lot of cozy dark alleys, with alien flying trees, and Mattiases photographing Daniels.

This concludes this installment. Don’t touch that dial!

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More photos…