Originally posted on and away she goes….:
Amir is in Morocco by now, starting another travel adventure with another client. Besides guiding, he is developing a business as an adventure concierge, an expert and natural travel companion who explores new places at your side while somehow making the connections and smoothing the pathways so that…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
Waking up in Bethlehem the day before Christmas Eve. I don’t think I’ve been in a sadder place. It’s Palestinian territory, landlocked in the West Bank, surrounded by walls designed by Israelis to keep terror and violence where they belong, which, they are determined, will not be in…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
A few days ago we were en route to Jerusalem from a Druze village in the north, tight against the Syrian border. There was bloody fighting here in 1973, a surprise attack on the Israelis from Syria on Yom Kippur. The Israelis were apparently caught unawares and as…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
Another day of over-eating. It was also a day in Old Jerusalem, and I’ll have more to say about that later as it sinks in. But right now my mind is focused on something blessedly more simple: knafeh. Knafeh (there are probably a dozen ways to spell it…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
(Still running a few days behind ~~ writing about 12/18 here) After we left Tzvat on Monday afternoon, we drove to the Golan Heights. A disconcerting length of the drive was within sight of Lebanon, clearly visible across a forbidding and impregnable border. When we got to the…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
Five days into our Israeli trip already. I am snug in bed in the Golan Heights, trying to assemble the last few days in my mind. I’ll just throw out the highlights, to bring us to now. We left Beirut on the 14th. Easy travel through Amman, no…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
And more food. Yesterday was a walking food tour of Beirut. We ate ourselves silly and learned a ton about Beirut and Lebanon from Iffat, our truly amazing, warm and wonderful guide from Taste Lebanon. She spent the day with us, from 10:30 am to 8:30 pm (when…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
We woke up in Nazareth this morning, in an old mansion, once owned by a prosperous Christian, now converted to a guest house for tourists and pilgrims. The last few days have been tightly packed and I was trying to finish a textbook chapter, so that was where…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
I’ve eaten a lot of meals sitting by, or even floating on, the Mediterranean. Wonderful meals, kissed by salty sea breezes in France, in Spain, in Greece, in Croatia, in Turkey, in Italy, in Israel. Today I added a country I was never quite sure I would get…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
Amalfi coast We are off the ship now. It was lovely, lovely, lovely, but it’s great to be in Rome. I am eager to go home in a couple of days. This vacation was exactly the right length, but that will be another blog post at another time.…

Originally posted on and away she goes….:
It may be a cruise staple but the galley tour is one of my favorite things about cruising (right up there along with shopping with the chef.) We stayed on board yesterday. We weren’t feeling too excited about Crotone, I wanted to make a start in a book…