In January Mason and I joined a group of Alaskans in Israel for an amazing trip. Of course I brought my camera and burned through a lot of memory. 🙂 But I am finding the processing and Journaling to be a bit much to try to sneak in between “Real” work. So I am going to do one day per blog post, and hopefully maintain some sort of momentum and make you want to visit.
So here is DAY 1:
According to my camera data, this was taken at 5:30am Alaska Time….. about 2 days after we left on the 8th. That alone will tell ya how far Israel is from Alaska…. it is a looong way. We came straight from the airport to the Mediterranean Sea and a visited a nice little Aqueduct outside Cesseria.
(This is the first shot of the trip…complete strangers.)
.jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
Here is Mason checking out the arches…. and they are even kind of golden!.jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
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Mason stole my camera to get a shot of me experiencing the Mediterranean for the first time. (First time out of the country for me! No, Canada doesn’t count, due to the fact that it is driving distance and you don’t need a passport for a visit)
(Not the world’s most flattering photo, but it was a landmark moment, haha!).jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
The golden Mediterranean
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And this is one of my faaaaavorites. It looks so rich and sparkly. I want a metallic canvas of this one (and I know just where to hang it too!): .jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
No kidding… I am in Israel for 20 minutes (as double checked by camera data…) and I score a photo of a lovely bride. Actually it was killing me the whole trip… I kept wishing I could pose a bride in all the cool places we were… but this is the only one I saw. At least I had this one shot before they shooed me away. .jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
Yep. I would go fishing there too.
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This is ruins from Herod the Great’s hippodrome..jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
I really love this shot… My mother. She absolutely loves Israel and comes every year and brings groups. One of my goals for the trip was to get a good photo of her enjoying one of her favorite places. You’ll see many attempts at that in my trip series… 🙂.jpg "(c) Ambience Photography 2011")
Not bad considering we arrived in Israel just before sunset.
Oh, I forgot to share a bit of a story about my first fun experience with the people…..
I must admit it is a bit of a culture shock to see how people pack themselves into places. Quite different from Alaska where our personal space bubbles are 3 feet on all sides. So the elevators were a bit of a shock for us. We were staying in a very crowded, older hotel in Tiberious. The first couple trips on the elevator, I always had my huz with me and we were just fine being one more sardine in the can. A bit later I needed to run down to the rental car to look for something. So I went by myself. When the elevator opened, it was already quite crowded, but I was trying to act like the local people, so I hopped on in, sardine style and held my breath. On the elevator were seven women, and one poor little Orthodox man. All of us women were doing our best to respect the poor little man by not touching him, so we were pressed against the walls of the elevator. And wouldn’t you know it? Half way down, the elevator got stuck! We were stuck for about 1/2 hour. You should have heard it, all those women talking at the same time… in Hebrew… a mile a minute. There was plenty of “helpful guidance” to whoever was attempting to figure out what to do. Eventually something must have worked because the elevator crept down to the bottom floor and we were safely evacuated. I took the stairs at that hotel from then on. 🙂
Stay tuned… tomorrow I’ll share about our visit to the Golan and the Valley of Tears.
