Once There Was And Was Not In Ancient Armenia

Little Sister Pony and I are back from our trip to Israel! We had a wonderful time there. I did some fieldwork, we saw friends, ate lots of yummy Israeli food, and bought pretty new clothes. I adore Israeli fashion, especially since my friends have been looking at my purchases and telling me to go back to Israel with a bigger shopping budget.

Of course, I also took pictures! Here is the first part of the selection I have for you:

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The Free Tour is a great way to see the Old City. The guides speak English, and we liked our guide a lot. He told lots of stories, and a few jokes. The one about the debate between Shlomo and the Pope was a chestnut, but he told it well, so I approve. We gathered in the plaza just outside the Jaffa Gate, and here are the things we saw!

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We took a brief excursion to Tel Aviv to visit a friend I'd met in Ravenna. Getting to Tel Aviv is easy; you just hop on a sherut, which is a shared taxi-van, and which costs about 23 sheqels to get between our hostel and the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv.

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Little Sister Pony really wanted to see Masada and the Dead Sea. We went on a tour for this, since I was too busy arranging field work to manage to figure out how to do it on our own. It turned out to be a pretty good deal, though. We got the bus ride, a guide to show us around, and an afternoon at the Ein Gedi spa.

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