Wanderlust: The best part of Israel

I always dreamed of going to Israel to soak in the history. While I’m not the most religious person now, I grew up with church on Sundays & went to Catholic school for 17 years. I studied the Bible in middle school, high school, & college. & while I’m not too sure what I believe in at the moment, I’ve always wanted to visit the places I’ve learned about while I was growing up. But if I’m being honest, the holy sites in Israel were my least favorite part.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t identify myself with any particular religion anymore – I’ve questioned my faith & have delved deep into exploring my spirituality, & there are so many different theories out there about higher powers in the world & every one of them fascinates me. Everyone has the right to believe in what they want to believe in; it’s not my place to tell someone else what is real when I don’t know, & it’s not their place to tell me either. But most of the people in Jerusalem don’t think this way.

Every person I bumped into, whether I tried to strike up a conversation or not, wanted to preach to me. To tell me what I should be seeing, what I should be believing, why one thing was right & another was wrong. It was exhausting, frustrating. The holy sites were overcrowded with tourists, which took away from the feeling & significance of the places we saw.

All the tourists at the Wailing Wall

So while some may shake their head at this, after a few hours exploring Jerusalem, we ditched the holy sites & hit a bar. Not just any bar – this was buried in the Mahane Yehuda Market, where you could spend hours walking by vendors selling mounds of spices, fresh fruit & juices, marinated olives, challah bread, souvenirs. There were restaurants, coffee stands, & bars. One my favorite ways to explore a new place is through my taste buds, so we ate our way through the market, & ended the night at the Beer Bazaar, tasting five different locally brewed Israeli beers.

Israeli tasting paddle

The beers were good, but the best part of visiting Israel was reuniting with a beautiful friend who could show us around. Haran & I met over four years ago when we were both staying at the Beach House in Fiji. She was one of the first friends I made on that trip, & she dragged me out of the hostel with her to go snorkeling with reef sharks & drink tea in local villages. We kept in touch for a while after that, but I’ve found that it’s not always important to have constant communication in order to maintain a friendship. It’s actually quite difficult when I live in a corner of the world that’s far away from so many people I love, & I’m very thankful to have so many friendships that can pick up where they left off, even if years have passed in between.

So even though four years had passed, Haran & her family were happy to take Carrie & me in for a few days. Haran’s parents welcomed us on a Friday night with the most spectacular Shabbat dinner – salmon, chicken, rice, fresh salads, homemade cheesecake – set us up in our own bedroom where we could finally unpack our bags for a few days, do some laundry, sleep in, shower without flip flops. Haran took us all over Israel – to hike Ein Gedi national park & take dips in waterfalls; to float in the Dead Sea & bake in the sun with salty mud on our skin; to explore the beaches, markets, restaurants, & hipster bars in Tel Aviv. I had the best visit, spending time with both Carrie & Haran. It was the perfect start to this long journey I’m on, & it was hard to say goodbye to these two wonderful girls at the airport on Sunday night.