Tel Aviv

Shalom y'all!

After our Sabbath excursion to Bethlehem we decided we'd had enough religion for one holiday, so we left Jerusalem and headed west. To Tel Aviv of course.

As you can see from the pictures Tel Aviv has some pretty nice beaches. Unfortunately they really don't want you to go in the water in the winter.

All the beaches had signs like the one above. They also seemed to be really worried about tsunamis, as you can see below. I didn't even know tsunamis were a thing in the Mediterranean...

Anyway, here's a picture of me about to throw Julius in the water. He came back shivering and murmuring something about really dangerous currents.

New Year's Eve came around while we were in Tel Aviv. Obviously New Year's Eve isn't really a thing in Israel so Julius and I went shopping in preparation for our own little party.

We found some nice Soviet champagne in one of the local shops but Julius kept nagging me until I bought a bottle for him too. Can you guess which one is his? The gold one of course. He really likes shiny things the little critter.

Finally I'm going to leave you with one more picture of me and the Tel Aviv skyline.

Bethlehem

Salam alaykum!

The day after out trip to Masada was a Saturday. When we woke up we saw that the streets were empty and everything was closed. At first we thought it was a nuclear apocalypse, but of course it was just the Sabbath. We hadn't planned for that though so we didn't have anything to eat for breakfast. While Julius was getting more and more cranky I came up with a solution. Let's go to Palestine! Palestinians don't celebrate Sabbath, and they make awesome food. Perfect! We hopped on a bus and soon we were in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem is a typical Arab town in the sense that there are shops and food stalls everywhere so finding breakfast wasn't hard. We settled for some fried chicken.

After breakfast we explored the town of Bethlehem. The locals were very nice. They'd even decorated their Christmas tree with reindeer! Just to make us feel at home.

We even met Santa Claus! Though I think he might have had one mulled wine too many...

Julius also insisted on taking a selfie with some random baby he found in a manger. Silly kid...

That's enough for today I think, but come back soon I still have more to tell you about our trip to the holy land.