Category: Travel

The day started with breakfast as usual, but today I decided to have a little coffee as well…

As I walked to work, it was interesting that some cars were patriotic with Israeli flags sticking out… It’s probably because of the holocaust memorial…

And some hang flags all the way down the building…

For the holocaust remembrance, at 10am there was a siren at 10am and people were to stand up for a couple of minutes. Unfortunately we were in the conference room and didn’t hear anything.

For lunch, I had goose,which was pretty good…

And Israeli salad…

Public transportation are not as convenient here so people typically don’t take the trains as much as, say cars, buses and taxis. We decided to take the Israeli train to Zikhron Ya’aqov, where one of our Israeli coworkers lived.

On the way to the train, we saw many military personnels getting off and heading home.

Then our train came…

and it was crowded today. Many people were reading on the train…

Now this trip isn’t really about sightseeing as much as work, but nevertheless, there are a few interesting things to see along the walk to work. The first of which is… breakfast! This hotel has pretty extravagant breakfast…

Seafood. Behind that hand there lies smoked salmon so some other fish… (sorry didn’t do as good of a job snapping with one hand)

Some hot foods…

Decent vegetable selection…

And different breads…

Cheese section…

Fruit section…

Apologize for the picture overload. That was just a few samples…  I just had a little bit with some freshly squeezed grapefruit and orange juice…

Though I didn’t get a picture of the smoked salmon because I ate it already before realizing I should photo journal my breakfast.

On the way to work, it still felt weird seeing all these street signs in Hebrew…

Looks like someone got an Israeli ticket…

And a couple cruising down in a race car…

And a bank that almost looks like Bank of America…

The weather was really strange today. It was 98 in the morning then dropped down to 71 with high winds in a matter of hours. There were some Saudi Arabia winds, similar to the Santa Ana winds in California.

I’ll share more as I see more interesting things, though right now most of my day is spent at work. May have to wait until weekend for really interesting stuff… I mean, Israel. What do you expect to see?  🙂

Stay tuned!

Here’s a business trip to Israel! I flew on El Al airline (which means To God in Hebrew) and took Business class for the first time. Prior to the trip, I had to get a letter of invitation, and was interviewed with questions on the nature of my stay.

Never been on business class, so it was nice to get the extra leg room for an international flight…

Here were the seat adjustment controls…

Despite the controls showing that you can recline, it wasn’t completely flat, unfortunately…

After about 13-14 hours, we arrived in Israel airport.

Overall Israel reminded me a little more of Taiwan than the States…

with older, concrete houses and people hanging clothes out of their windows.

I did get to stay at a very nice hotel…

View from my floor…

Definitely not used to seeing Hebrew signs everywhere. Here the first language is Hebrew, followed by Arabic, then Russian (apparently lots of Russian Jew immigrations), and then English. That said, just about everyone spoke English here at Tel Aviv, the happening city in Israel.

Interesting that for the parking floors, instead of P1 and P2, they go negative…

Here’s a picture of the recycle bin…

And here’s a coca-cola store, oh no, wait, that’s a post office!

Here’s an interesting decor, though I have no idea what this is…

Unfornately, there were graffitis everywhere…

Also saw an interesting balcony…

Check out this parking job. Wonder how he’s planning to get out…

This is the dinner place we went to. Check out the number of people dining… and the first thing they asked us was, “Do you have a reservation?”

Turns out that Israelis have a big dinner, and most people eat at home at night, when dinner prices could double or more.

Unfortunately this place didn’t really have Israeli food, so I just got a seafood dish…

The hotel was right by the Mediterranean Sea…

And a little further south from Tel Aviv was a city called Jaffa, where there’s supposely eateries for workers that serve only one or two dishes.

Back at the hotel, there were some Orthodox Jews. They’re hard to detect… see if you can find them.

So a Jewish friend taught me that Toda is thank you, Bevakasaha means Please, Sliha means Sorry, and… how do you think people greet each other? Shalom?

They say “hi”.

When it comes to holidays, it’s interesting. Apparently there’s some holocaust observation holiday today (Wed), so most restaurants close in observance of it. We had to eat at the hotel.

Now their Passover is interesting, where you work half day for an entire week. Here in Israel the holidays, including Shabbat (Sabbath), starts around 6pm the day before and ends 7pm the day of. So they typically get half a day the day before as well… though that poses an issue this weekend, where everything closes down by 6pm the day before and the entire day on Saturday. Guess the sightseeing this weekend will be much shorter than expected!

And I’ll have to work on Sunday. Ugh!

Our fellowship went to the Enatai Beach park for some sun and fun.  Strangely, the park is directly under the I-90 bridge for some nice perpetual static noise.  After potluck, we had water balloon tossing…

And three-legged race…

And Maddy went into the water for the first time…

For more pictures, visit the Enatai Beach album!

Karen and I went on the ECC tent camping trip this past weekend with Happyfish.  The initial plan was to arrive on Friday night, but due to some circumstantial events, our small group ended up arriving on Saturday morning, much to Karen’s delight.

We proceeded to erect the 10-men tent…

Afterwards, we went down to the beach, where some jet skis were available to cruise on free of charge, courtesy of some brother in ECC.  Erick and Jun took the initial run, squeezed the accelerator, and almost broke the 1 MPH barrier.  Yes, my grandma could have walked faster than that.  Evidently there was a foreign object caught in the vehicle, so my engineering instinct was unleashed as I attempted the delicate repair.

Having escaped shorting out the engine a few times, the repair was successful and the jet ski cruised down the runway at over 50 MPH…

When I took the helm, I decided to take it easy by squeezing the accelerator all the way, gliding down the waters through the slow region and nearly getting ticketed.  So what’s new?

After that, it was time for a change of pace, and we headed to the stable for some horseback riding.  When we arrived, there was no one in sight.  Having resisted the urge to hop on the horses for a self-guided tour around the region, we found another way to satiate that urge…

After that we got bored of playing horsey and started playing some caveman bocce…

Finally the cowboys returned and we each mounted a horse to ride into the wilderness, except when I gleefully hopped onto my horse, I ended up on a mule instead.  I got gypped.

His dominance must have been the donkey side, as Charlie kept glancing left and right and stopped every 30 seconds to eat the surrounding foliage, holding up the line.  When I tried to steer him, he appeared to be on autopilot and ignored my signals.  When I left him alone, he ended up walking through the bushes instead.

With everyone’s legs cramped up at this point, Karen assumed a funky posture to the relief the tension…

Then we had some BBQ dinner, sang some songs, and hit the sacks.  The next morning, we were revitalized as we attended the Sunday service…

Well, some of us were revitalized anyway…  For more pictures, go to the Tent Camping album!

Instead of initiating another battle with the persistent weeds in our backyard, Karen and I decided to take the day off from housing duties and stroll around the downtown Seattle.

Afterwards, we were a little tired, so we headed to Myrtle Edwards park noth of the piers to take a breather.

  I had Karen go over to miniature peninsula and shot some pictures when suddenly an unexpected gust of wind caused an unexpected splash…

Then we noticed a new addition to the sidewalk resembling the an Oscar trophy making a splash…

Then we played with some artistic photoshoot…

and jumped to the area where the remaining pieces of sculture are…

The rest of the pictures can be found in the Waterfront gallery.

Living in Rome has definitely required some adjustments, as Karen and I had to re-learn various mundane routines.  For example, I stroded down to the restroom for a #1, and it took me a while to identify the trigger which activated the system.

Anyway, after that we headed out Rome and decided to take the train.  We noticed this one girl who must have skimped on her ticket, as her seat location was a little peculiar…

This is certainly most inconvenient when some passengers need to pass, but beyond that, it is most awkward to have to face a passenger for the entire duration of the trip.  Yours truly happened to be that passenger.

It was one thing to be in the same compartment with 4 other passengers, but being observed like Jim Carrey in the Truman Show while we ate, read, and napped was most unpleasant.

After a few hours, we arrived at the destination, Palazzo Bruchi, where the doors were characteristically small…

And the keys were super high-tech…

Not to mention super-large size penthouses…

And included fancy breakfast served in your room!  Okay okay, so it was some self-serve packaged food, definitely a downgrade from the Convent.

After being spoiled by the St. Peter’s Basilica, we decided to check out the Duomo in Siena, and the facade was…

a facade in the truest sense.  What timing…  Anyway, at least not all sides were wrapped up.

Inside, the entire interior was lined with 172 Pope’s heads, giving a very eerie feeling, as if it were straight from some Hunted House movie….

After that we ventured to Il Campo, the best square in Italy.  No idea why it’s the best square because it’s just a flat piece of land…

We had dined on the square, and the food was actually quite good.  We had some deliciously prepared Salmon…  cooked to medium.

After this we joined the evening walk along Via Banchi di Sopra, basically the one road that runs through town.  I think the whole town was shopping on this street, and it wasn’t long before we reached the end, where all the young people from the town hung out.

I wonder if some of these kids will just grow up in this town and be sheltered from the rest of the world…  Just when we thought we reached the end, we noticed there were people coming up from the underground with a Italian guard posted at the entrance.  Hmm, what was it?  A secret passageway?  Nuclear testing?  Matlab?  Karen and I took out our courage, walked pass the guard, and descended the escalator, only to end up at…

A grocery store.  Okay, maybe we got too carried away with our imagination.

For more pictures, check out the Siena gallery.

Siena was certainly a relaxing town, but we were about to hit the most recognizable monument of all.  Where was this place?  Why did the police start throwing people out?  Find out next time on my blog!

After our departure from St. Peter’s Basilica it was already 4:30pm, so we ran to the Vatican Museum.  Can you spot Karen in this picture?

One of the famous sculptures in this museum was the Torso.  I thought it was some unfinished piece of…  I later found out that this wasn’t the entire work, but what’s left of it.

Check out the impressive depth on the wall…

This being a Catholic museum, I didn’t expect to find pagan goddesses here.  Apparently they carried Antemis, goddess of fertility.  There’s a debate on whether those are breasts or bulls’ balls.

Anyway, after this, we went to the highlight of this museum, the Sistine Chapel.  When we entered the room, it was dim, the room was packed body to body with standing tourists who couldn’t squeeze into a seat, and signs were posted at the entrances saying “No Noise. No Pictures”.  Of course, it didn’t prevent people from attempting to take pictures or talk.  Periodically, a loud “shhhh” would originate from a guard as the crowd quiets down, and the audio level would gradually build up in this again in this perpetual cycle.

Can you find the famous Adam and God portait?

After this we went to Campo ‘de Fiori (Field of Flowers), where we had dinner.  We got here around 6pm, but unfortunately the Italians typically have their dinner around 8pm, so most of the restaurants haven’t opened yet, except for the touristy ones.

As we had dinner, we were treated to the Italian music with accordion et al. 

Again, the Italians really try to preserve old artifacts, such as Theater of Pompey where Julius Caesar was assassinated, so these apartments were built right into the outer wall.  Either that or they were trying to save material costs…

After dinner, we went on the “Night Walk Across Rome” tour from Rick Steve.  Along the way, we noticed this poor dog chained up, with no owner in sight.

After this we went to Piazza Navona, the most interesting night scene with street music, artists, ice cream, fountains made by Bernini, etc.  We tried the “Tartufo” ice cream, “Death by Chocolate”.  Fortunately it didn’t taste like it sounds.

About half way through our enjoyment of the chocolate ice cream, some police cars, followed by some antique cars, started driving into the piazza, circling around, honking.  After examining the Rick Steve’s guide more closely, we realized this piazza used to be a race track back in the Roman days, and they kept the original shape of the tracks.  I wish we had more than a couple centuries of history in the States…

After this, we walked to the Trevi fountain.  The place was multitudinous even at 10pm.  The magic of the place was that if you threw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, it’ll grant a wish and ensure your return to Rome.

At first we were planning to visit the Spanish Steps after this, but unfortunately it was approaching 10:30pm and we dreaded being locked out of our rooms by the punctual nuns, so we decided to skip our last destination.  Maybe the coin at the bottom of the fountain will ensure our return, but for now we could only enjoy the sight of the Spanish Steps in postcards.  For more pictures of this day, check out the Vatican City gallery.

What will James and Karen’s experience be as they arrive in the urban Siena?  What was the most awkward train ride that James has ever had?  And what about the church that deceived James and Karen?  Find out next time on my blog!  🙂

Descending from the dome wasn’t as bad as climbing the dome, even if it’s 323 claustrophobic steps.  By the way, I didn’t describe too many items in St. Peter’s Basilica, so let me just highlight a couple of exhibits.  On the right side was this statue, the only statue behind a glass.

Michaelangelo sculpted this statue, called Piet?, which means pity, is his only signed work.  Unfortunately in 1972, some crazy dude with a hammer ran in and started chopping at the statue, so it’s been behind bulletproof glass ever since.

Of course, being St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the altars marked the spot where St. Peter was crucified. 

Speaking of St. Peter, we saw a funky bronze statue of St. Peter.  The right toe has been worn out from all the foot-fetishists, and there’s usually a line for kissing the toe.  To avoid foot-and-mouth disease, one could also kiss the hand and rub the toe.  Today the whole center was sealed off, so it was not possible to pay reverence to Paul.

Speaking of which, this whole Basilica started giving me the creeps about how pagan everything seemed.  From the statues, which appeared to be idols, to the altars, to having naked statues inside the Basilica, to the goddesses such as Helena.

Everything just seemed so Greek Mythology, except with Bible character substitution.  Anyway…

After this we decended into the truly creepy crypt, where we were greeted by Egyptian sarcophagus.

Oh wait, that’s the pope.  Anyway, you see the resemblance.  Having the popes being higher than the angels, I suppose it was no wonder they got their altar upon death. 

We also passed by the tomb of the newer popes, who no longer got the same distinction but was lined up with lots of picture takers.  One of these was the latest Pope John Paul II.

Further into the crypt where the tomb of St. Peter was.

You couldn’t actually see the tomb unless you took a 10 euro tour, booked a week in advance, so this was all we could see.

After this we exited the Basilica and passed by the clowns, I mean, guards.

After this we ventured into the Vatican Museum, where more paganism manifested itself, but I’ll leave that for another blog.  🙂

One of the privileges of visiting Rome was bumping into monuments everywhere.  Even when we walked on an obscure, tiny road, we saw walls from the first century fenced off under government protection…

At least that’s what I concluded these were.  Validating my theory would have been an easier feat had we spoken Italian, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

After this, Karen and I locked up our bags and squeezed onto the crowded #64 bus, most famous for its pickpockets.  Thankfully with our vigilant eyes, we didn’t miss the stop or any bags.

There were numerous fountains in Rome powered by their well-designed aqueducts.  They were cool, refreshing, and best of all, free.  Braving the chance of E. Coli infection, Karen and I loaded it up and it tasted better than bottled water.

Since we were still alive after partaking the liquid of unknown origin, we took some pictures of St. Peter’s Square…

And St. Peter’s Basilica, where the Pope typically gave his speeches…

Unfortunately because we didn’t attend Sunday worship, I didn’t get a chance to catch the pope and question him on his infallibility.

After lining up for quite some time, we finally arrived at the entrance of the Basilica, where we encountered this Holy Door.  It’s opened on Christmas Eve every 25 years, when the pope bangs the door three times with some mystic silver hammer and the door opens for pilgrims to pass through.

I asked Karen to walk up for a picture, but to my dismay, Karen decided to take a century before looking forward, so I ended up with a Shampoo ad instead.

When she turned around for the normal shot, we were informed by some bored guards that we could not take pictures with the door.  “Only the door, not people”.  While I reasoned with him, I paved the way for hundreds of other tourists to take pictures behind him, but it certainly didn’t help my own efforts.  In the end it was a futile exercise.

So we entered St. Peter’s Basilica…

Despite the basilica being two football fields away and could hold 60,000 members, the basilica was designed to be intimate using optical illusions.  For example, the statue at the top was much bigger than the statue of the bottom, which made the place feel smaller.

Ironically I’d like some optical illusions around my house to make my house look bigger.

After finishing the Basilica tour, we decided to climb the dome.  We first took the elevator to the first level, then climbed some stairs to the second level.  Unfortunately the safety fence 10 feet tall slightly hindered our ability to exercise our photographic liberties.

Fortunately for us, through some ingenious creativity, circumvented the technical difficulty…

And we were rewarded with a shot of the basilica from the middle of the dome, thanks to my image stabilizing lens…

As we made our way to the upper dome, the path became psychodelic as the walls started twisting and the walkway shrunk alongside of the dome…

And when the rope appeared, we knew we were in for some serious staircase…

After squeezing through the final rat hole, we were greeted with a grand view of St. Peter’s Square.

After this, we decended what appeared to be a prop for Slimfast commercial, considering how slim you had to be to squeeze through.  Just look at Karen…

What’s at the end of this staircase?  What else happened in Vatican City?  How did we we end up watching a modern Chariot race?  Find out next time on my blog!  🙂