Other fun stuff in Israel

Of course, Israel isn't all wacky pilgrims and gun-toting car services. A friend and colleague of ours had graciously invited us to give talks at Ben Gurion University, ostensibly the reason for the whole trip.

Ahem.

I've been searching around online for a map to put here to give you a sense of how Israel's laid out. But try this exercise for a minute: go to Google maps and scroll east to Israel. Notice anything funny? Israel does actually have things in it. Like roads and towns. I guess Google's decided to pull the maps - take a few guesses as to blogosphere hypotheses on this. Hint: You can really tell the blogger's political leanings by their hypotheses.

Boy, the more I search, the crazier it gets. Here's a reasonable one, although a bit kindergarten-y:


One fantastic day we hit some little-known and practically-deserted ruins just outside Beer Sheba called Midras. It was a cave system used as a hideout by Jewish rebels. In some places the caves were only about 14 inches high ... we wiggled through and got ourselves good and filthy.


Also at Midras, we had a minor scuffle with a herd of goats (I discovered KC's a coward when it comes to large numbers of horned animals) and discovered Israel's only pyramid. A bit, erm, underwhelming, perhaps?


We had a pleasant run-in with a family of gazelles at Ben Gurion's tomb, also a national park. This one winked at KC while he took pictures. Weird.


One night we went to Tel Aviv for dinner. It looks like a very cool city, but we only saw the beach. City with a sand beach? Two thumbs up!


And then ... and then there was Petra. Which deserves its own blog post.