The 15th of Av

Thursday night the city of Haifa organized a special street party for the 15th of Av. They blocked all the traffic to the main Carmel street just above my place, put a small scene, loud music, and all the bars and restaurants opened stands on the street. Six of us spent the evening in the crowd, enjoying the crowd, the fun and a few drinks. Here is how it looked like (more pics here):


Dancing on the bus stop with kegs.


Concert scene

The next day Omer, Michelle and I joined a few Omer friends camping on the beaches of the Tiberias lake. No pictures for you, the weather was so hot that we ended up dipping in water all day and all night (felt great :).

Weekend in Tel Aviv

I spent this last weekend in the city that never sleeps and... well I didn't sleep much either :). Friday afternoon an excellent lunch in a good restaurant, party during the night, saturday night Tori Amos concert and in between long promenades in the nearby parks and sea front. Tori's concert was a fantastic performance and convinced me I should listen more to her :).

I took the camera along (it's becoming an habit) and some samples can be found at the usual place. I found this scene to be pretty amusing (probably not for non french though):


And if any of you can find what the following picture is refering to, I am quite curious. Google didn't give me any easy answer.


I assume it is a reference to фронт though, but why 5 ?

Montfort

This weekend I went back to Monfort (fortified mount in french), an old crusader castle in a quiet isolated valley of western Galil. There was hopefully a nice breeze and some clouds that helped us deal with the summer's heat. The place is still filled with serenity, and what once was a very important road to watch over remained isolated and unbuild for almost a millenium.

Weekend in Jordan

After a week trying to organize a trip to Petra from Haifa for 6 to 8 people the standard last minute slackers skipped again. I actually won't complain, traveling at 4 is so much more convenient than more. All organization plans failed so we travelled "my" way (Habeeb said "Inch Allah" way). We drove to the border with my car, grabbed a Taxi on the other side and made our way to Kerak castle (Le Crac des Moabites) stopping on the way for some great kebabs, and nice views on the dead sea shore.



As you can see I am having fun stitching pictures (it saves me buying and carrying a wide angle lense :). Once in the castle, a nice refreshing breeze welcomed us, the scenary and the feeling was so great that we got our driver to overwait for us.



We reached Petra just for the sunset and to hear fireworks and parties starting.



We spent the whole saturday going around Petra the Nabatean city, from the gorge to the monastery, under a hopefully not too hot July sun. As my last trip there, the sky was clear blue, the site beautiful and gigantic, full of light contrasts and colors. I advise you to look at the pictures here, here and here if you have some time.

The parking (follow-up)

I've been quite lazy and busy so I am catching up on stories. After my car got locked into that @$#%@#$^%$ parking on Sabbat evening, I left it over the weekend in Jerusalem because the parking was reopenning only on sunday morning.

Sunday morning I took the bus to the station then jumped in an "express" bus to Jerusalem. It was obviously full, mostly with young soldiers. I ended up sitting on the floor for the 2 hours it took us to reach Jerusalem. It was a strange feeling, I was surrounded by M16s and other guns, one guy actually dropped his charger on me and spread the ammos all over the place... I am still not used to be surrounded by firearms.
The worst part of it is that I was sitted right on top of the engine, burning my .ss, and that the guy sitting next to me was impaling me with his M16 each time he was falling asleep (about as often as I was waking him up).
Once in Jerusalem I jumped in another bus and finally reached that stupid parking. I took my car, pretended to have lost my ticket to avoid paying for the whole weekend of parking and drove back to work. It took me almost 6 hours and an experience of Israeli buses, so now I kinda try to check the signs at the entrance of closed parkings...

New Old Wonder

I spent this weekend in Jordan and we happend to visit Petra on the 07/07/07 where there happened to be the celebration for the nomination of Petra among the 7 new wonders of the world. I am happy because I got a good picture, but we didn't get to see the show because after 4 hours of waiting nothing had started. Anyways Petra was fantastic, it felt like the first time. More posts will follow if I don't get lazy and when I'll finish the processing of my 350 pictures and look at the other's 700 :).