So we are being tourists on a pilgrimage. Or we are on a pilgrimage with occasional tourist stops. Eating and shopping.
It is a special kind of touristy place, a religiously oriented tourist place. So in addition to the variety of magnets, pens, pads, t-shirts and jewelry, you also see prayer shawls, Bibles, Mezuzah, chalice, patens, and stoles. There are entire stores filled with glassware to mimic the mosaics we saw at the Church of the Loaves and Fishes. You kind find virtually every detail of Jesus life crafted out of olive wood, some authentic olive wood, some not so much. There are menorah of every size shape and description. You can’t begin shopping in the larger shops until you have undergone the mandatory introductory sales pitch. Although they vary, the basic version is “thank you for coming to our country, here is all the wonderful things we have in our shop, and you get this amount of a discount.” And unlike other countries that I have visited, the salesperson begins the haggling by immediately dropping the price of any item that you pick up. Now for all you seasoned hagglers you realize the immediate problem this presents, you don’t actually know the price of the item in your hand and they have already dropped it, so you haven’t had the chance to form a bargaining price in your head. And it turns out even shipping is negotiable. So I purchased a pretty big item got them down to 50% and had them include postage. I even saw my salesperson leave the store with the item and he told me he was mailing it now.
And every major religious site has the vendors selling items out front. They are not as numerous as the children in Cambodia or India, but they are also not nearly as young. Most are in fact probably my age. Our guide alerted us to the fact that many can be pickpockets and thieves as well as vendors. Some sell goods that are not of any quality. So the guide set up a system for alerting us, since he is on the street with a group at least twice a month. If a vendor approaches and our guide takes the item from him and shows the group, and asks the vendor how much, then that is a man that can be trusted. If the guide says oh look at the pretty stuff, but never touches it, then we should be wary.
The food. Okay, the food. Typically we are getting standard hotel fare prepared for European and Americans on pilgrimage to this country. I am not sure that I have ever had so much food that didn’t taste like anything. Seriously. Desserts which in appearance are beautiful are depressingly bland. However, the couple of meals that we have had out in the world, in little joints that appear to have dropped straight out of the French Quarter have been great. I had falafel, which was tasty, delicious even, but I think it is cornbread fried flat with some eastern spices. Today we had shwarma. Yes, I would vote again for shawrma. It’s a chicken sandwich in pita bread, with the chicken being roasted in some great spices. And while in Jericho the glass store we stopped at had a fruit and nut stand and I bought some things from there, including about a life time supply of saffron.
Of course the usual fast food restaurants are around. I have seen a couple of Kentucky Fried Chicken places, and the roman arches at McDonalds, where the drive thru is called the McDrive. Sad to see that we have imported some of our own bad habits.
And speaking of bad habits, how about my coffee addiction. So far I have found two kinds of coffee in Israel, Turkish and instant. And you can even get Turkish instant. No that's not instant you didn't stir well. The Turkish coffee is pretty good most places, you just have to remember that the fiber content increases dramatically as you approach the bottom of the cup. And when you are desperate for a caffeine fix, instant is just fine. Actually I rather enjoyed the instant in Tiberius, here in Jerusalem it is Nescafe, and fairly mundane.
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