gardens in haifa and an old port town in akko

Day 13 - Up north to Haifa and Akko

The day starts with confusion. Daylight savings has started but only for the West Bank. That means the entire West Bank populace will run an hour late until the rest of the country catches up in October. We check on google and the absurdity hits us. Rob's mum giggles. "They fight even about the time," she says. She's right.

Our driver was the one to tell us this. He's on West Bank time but remains unconvinced that we're right. He got a text from the phone company letting him know about the change in time "in Hebrew" he keeps pointing out. "We'll ask an Israeli. He'll tell you it's 6.41 am. Not 7.41 am!" He's brought along a tray of dates. I eat it in the backseat and watch the drama for today. He beeps at the car stopped at the lights next to us. "What is the time please?" he asks. "Quarter to eight," the man says. The car erupts in glee from Rob and me, disbelief from our driver. "That Israeli! He's not right. He's asleep!" Our driver asks another person. This time a Palestinian Muslim woman. She tells him, "Quarter to eight." The morning traffic on the road now convinces him. "I'm pissed," our driver says. "Why they change my clock?"

On the long drive from East Jerusalem to Haifa, we pass a Coke factory and road signs that say "No Shoulders". I think for a moment that there are even signs banning the crazy sight of women's shoulders. Banks and banks of red, white and orange bougainvilleas growing like beautiful, tropical weeds stream past my window. Rob is snoozing in the front seat as landscape gives way slowly to sandy verges and a ribbon of blue Mediterranean sea. There's a lot more green up here. 

Haifa is lovely. Breezy, casual, organised, and lots of laidback retirees with their shirts hanging open. There's gorgeous Israeli girls with caramel hair down to their waists and buff guys coming from the gym. There's a giant statute of coffee in a takeaway container and I think, Why hasn't Wellington got one of those? We have coffee, halva croissants and omelette baguette at Cafein, along with a small percentage of Haifa's over-65s. The bread is amazing. The coffee is good. Haifa is super relaxing.

goat playing violins at the tel aviv museum of art

Day 11 - Tel Aviv

On the way to Tel Aviv, there's a chubby kid on an electric bike cruising along the motorway with his mate riding on the back wheel. Electric bikes are apparently super popular here. You can buy them at the 7-11. One of our driver's two lawyers has one. I don't ask why our driver needs two lawyers.

I've had enough to looking at at these cities and towns from the backseat of a car. I want to be outside, walking for hours, stopping wherever takes my fancy without the hassle of finding parks or people tooting or the driver shouting out his window for directions. Unfortunately, public transport isn't a strength in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Nor would I personally feel particularly safe. A car is a necessary evil. 

We're headed to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Our driver doesn't know where it is so he's winding down the windows and hollering at people standing on the street or at the driver of the neighbouring care while both cars are speeding along the road. Dude doesn't need a map. The citizens of Tel Aviv are his map. Except what appeared to work like a charm elsewhere (Jerusalem, Jericho, Bethlehem), doesn't quite come off in the more upscale Tel Aviv. People look, frankly, startled. I've actually got a map on my phone to the museum but this way is just more amusing.  

We find it. It's open! I shout, "Art doesn't close for anyone!" The Tel Aviv Art Museum is air-conditioned. It's all sharp edges, Bauhaus curves, tricky architecture, slices of vista, and gleaming marble floors. Every bit of it is named after the people who paid for it. Rob says maybe he'll sponsor a door handle and get it named after him. 

There's free Wi-Fi, there's a cafe with passable coffee, sandwiches and chocolate croissants as big as your face. It takes credit. The bathrooms are spotless and the people aren't shouting or crying or kissing the floor. So I like my creature comforts. Sue me. Women are in little sundresses, fancy floral rompers; in other words, appropriately dressed for the weather. I see women's arms, legs, shoulders out in public for the first time. I want to clap. No long skirt and t-shirt for me here. 

dead sea floating

Day 10 - Jericho to the Dead Sea

We're going to the desert. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. Rob asks where my long skirt is for Jericho. I'm feeling churlish. "If they want me to wear a long skirt anywhere, I'm not going in," I say. Yesterday, I huffed my way through 30 degree heat in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The days before, I was in a long skirt and t-shirt. Guys, I just want to wear a dress or some shorts or a singlet. I do not know how the local women do it; some fully veiled, others in this get up, but always mostly covered. In the end, I give up. The skirt goes in the bag.

We're driving down the highway. I'm eating Nestle Crunch and gagging to myself. The compound chocolate is gross. I'm afraid to get the ice cream all over the seat. I'm scrambling for a plastic bag. Outside, the landscape is dramatic. There are sand dunes, large swathes of caramel-coloured sand set against a blue sky. A sign at a junction on the highway lets us know we are now officially at sea level. Also, there's a camel there, tied up in the middle of an island in the road, hanging out. His Bedouin owners are lounging on the side of the road in a tin lean-to, just hanging out. The scene is surreal.

circuitous routes to the western wall

Day 8 - the Jewish Quarter to the Garden of Gethsemane

We're off to a slow start. The luxury of spending a week or more in cities is that you can have a proper holiday. That means getting up whenever you feel like it, having a really big breakfast, and for me, spending a really long time on my hair and makeup so my travel pictures have that casual OH-LOOK-AT-ME-LANDING-AT-THIS-EXOTIC-PLACE-AND-WAFTING-ABOUT-LIKE-A-BUTTERFLY look. I listen to Ben Howard, London Grammar and Lorde and read my Japanese fashion mags.

Just after lunch time, we're dropped of at Dung Gate. Already everything is different. We're on a hilly bit of the old city overlooking the Mount of Olives. There are less hawkers. The marbled streets are cleaner. It feels more organised. There are lines. In Tokyo, people would already be lining up for the escalator metres out from the bottom of it. That's not really the way it works back in the souks of the Muslim Quarter in the old city.

believing along the via dolorosa

Day 6 & 7 - Tokyo, Japan to Jerusalem, Israel

Day 6 went like this:

• 3 hours in Narita Airport - I had strawberry pancakes with whipped cream and strong coffee. Dithered over slippers from Muji but chickened out at the last minute. Still regretting this decision. 
• 15 hours in the air, over large swathes of Russia - for the first time in my life, we flew and still had access to the internet. I spent it playing Godus. Robin, of course, was on Reddit.
• 4 hours in transit via Frankfurt Airport - My hate for Frankfurt airport's nameless, endless corridors of nothingness and confusing layout continues afresh. There's a section with cots for exhausted travellers to lay down. Am tempted but it's refugee-camp chic bothers me. Flights to Tel Aviv always leave from Gate C13. The reason becomes clear later when we are cleared from the gate and an hour later, we come back and the area has been transformed into its own little security checkpoint complete with gates, more scanners, more airport security. This is the second security checkpoint so far. We're thoroughly searched and patted down, asked a few pointed questions, my Polaroid camera is swabbed, but finally we're through. 
• 4 hours in the air - Blessed sleep. Terrible airplane. Not even any movies available. I feel transported back to travel in the 90s.
• 1 hour by car from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - Getting out of Tel Aviv airport was surprisingly easy. All the passport officers are in their early twenties. We're asked where we're going that night, the purpose of our travel, and, instead of getting our passports stamped, we get two little slips of paper that says we're allowed in.

By this time, of course, we're into the early hours of Day 7. The long travel time beats me. I am demoralised when the alarm I set for 4 am on Day 6 goes off again on Day 7, marking 24 hours of being awake.

I wake up in Rob's parents apartment in Shuffat. In July, riots broke out in this suburb over the death of a 16 year old Palestinian boy. This morning, everything is still and the only promise of violence is a feral cat on a windowsill eyeing up a bird nearby. There's cereal, eggs, nectarines, and the freshest almonds I've ever tasted for breakfast.