Things Y and I did wrong in a mosque:
1. bared too much skin (shoulders)
2. touched
3. accidentally smuggled in a bottle of wine.
So, basically, everything.
Monthly Archives for April 2014
The colors of Akko
Get ready: I’m about to hit you with, like, 6 posts about Akko, a city you’ve probably never heard of but should definitely visit. Actually, I’m going to hit you with 6 blog posts and a Steller. Does anyone else use Steller? I think it’s so fun.
The old city of Akko, located on the coast of Northern Israel, is an ancient walled city made up mostly of Muslim families. This means every night the sky glows with the neon lights of minarets and several times a day, the noise of the city is muffled by the call to prayer that takes over the village. The city streets are narrow stone alleys with tiny convenience stores tucked into nooks and crannies and bright shades of blue, green and turquoise hiding behind every corner.
It’s like nowhere I’ve ever been.
—
I had to write that intelligent sounding paragraph to make up for what was actually coming out of our mouths, over and over again, while we wandered the streets of Akko:
“It looks just like it did on Wikipedia!” –Y
and,
“This is just like Aladdin!” — me.
chillax: a travel playlist
Haifa, Israel
“I guess this is it?”
It had taken fifteen minutes of twisty, uphill driving, but we had finally reached our destination: what was supposed to be the grandest view in Haifa, a promenade overlooking the magnificent Bahai Gardens and the Haifa bay. We slowed the car down in front of an overgrown field.
“This is not it,” said Y.
But it was the address given to us by our hotel, and without internet we were basically helpless, so we parked the car and wandered into the weeds. The air was thick with the smell of skunk. There was trash everywhere.
This was not it.
We turned around, and on our way out nearly ran into two tourists; women who had apparently been given the same faulty address. One of them interrupted a man on his cellphone sitting on a parked motorcycle nearby.
“Rak rega,” he said, annoyed. Just a second.
Y and I shrank back, embarrassed. We aren’t tourists, remember? We’re wanderers.
It turns out that we were just down the street from the promenade, and when we reached it we were embarrassed we ever thought it would be a dusty, overgrown trail. Our journey was worth it — not just for the view of Haifa, but so that I could recreate this picture from 2000:
The last time I visited Israel, I was sixteen (and obviously a total fashionista). We arrived on a boat from Athens, Greece, pulling into the port in Haifa after days of seasickness, bad boat food, and mild claustrophobia. Haifa, a city on a hill that is compared to San Francisco (by others) and a sandcastle (by myself), must have looked magical. I remembered that, and 14 years later, I planned it as our first stop in Israel.
And it was just… fine.
Sure, we enjoyed our hyper-stylish boutique hotel and savored our first taste of real Middle Eastern hummus at Fattoush. The Bahai Gardens, a shrine to the founder of Bahai (a fascinating religion), are beautiful and worth a look.

But, and maybe this was because Haifa was our first stop, things just kept getting better and better and by the end of the trip, Haifa seemed like an afterthought.
On the plus side, we did invent a new catchphrase that’s sweeping the world… it’s so good we’re giving ourselves a big… wait for it… Haifa-five.
You love it. Admit it.
Let the Israel posts commence…
A few things about Israel:
1. I have lived on this Earth for 29 years, and never once have I run smack into a glass door.
In Israel, it happened to me twice.
It happened to Y once.
Mazel tov, Israel, you pretty much have the cleanest glass in the world.
2. Sing it with me, everyone: …and I’m proud to be an American….
3. On Sunday morning, our flight left from Tel Aviv at 5 am, with an 8 hour layover in Amsterdam, getting us home to Minneapolis at 7 pm the same day (so basically, we time traveled). Rather than go to sleep in Tel Aviv, we stayed up all night, fueled by ouzo shots and wine. When our plane landed in Amsterdam a few hours later, we took the train into the city for the day. In other words, I was an international jet setter on Sunday.
On Monday, I did nothing but organize my medicine cabinet.
It was almost as much fun and left me with far less jet lag.
4. I’m currently spamming Instagram with photos from my trip. They’re all from last week, and I realize this isn’t how Instagram is intended to be used, but I don’t actually care. For 2 reasons:
1) I don’t think of Instagram as a way to gain followers or “enhance my brand”. For me, it’s just a scrapbook — there have been plenty of times when I needed a pick me up and engaged in some instatherapy — scrolling back through my pictures and realizing what a nice little life I have.
2) Despite sharing far too much about my life on the internet, I have a fear that if I post photos while I’m out of town someone is going to come steal all of my stuff (because people are clamoring for my Target wardrobe and Ikea furniture). Although, if anyone was paying attention, my absence from social media was probably even more suspicious…
visit Minneapolis…and do what?
Inside my travel journal
I don’t know about you, but I always bring a travel journal when I go on a trip. (Above, gold sharpie on a black moleskine, but how cute are these new notebooks from Rifle Paper?) How else would I record vivid memories and smart (really smart) commentary:
All quotes from my Media in the British Isles study abroad program in 2005 (I had just turned 21).
On what makes a good travel experience
“I knew the trip was off the a good start when I sat next to the 2 cutest guys on the plane from Houston to Gatwick.”
On arriving in London and being confused
“We [exited the airport] to get on our mini bus… but we all crowded around the right side of the bus to get on. The bus driver was like UGH…..”
On Paris versus London
“J’adore Paris! Well, really J’adore London a lot more. “
On history
“We ended up at the tower of London, which I really thought they could have made more interesting.”
On things that are better than history
“Today we went to Topshop. It was AMAZING.”
On adventures
“Olivia and I had a fabulous drunken heart to heart… then we peed in the bushes with the Finnish girls and got chased by a Quasimodo-ish bum.”
On Dave Matthews
“It’s like Dave and I always say: ‘Turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters.'”