Day 4: Caesaria, Tel Aviv (a.k.a one of the best days of my life)

Today was a super fun day! We started in the morning heading off to Caesarea after breakfast. Caesarea was the seat of the Roman government in Israel two centuries ago. When we got off the bus, we felt the breeze from the sea, and the weather was perfect. It was truly a beautiful day for a beautiful place. We began our tour of the ancient city in the theater. I learned it was not, in fact, an amphitheater because it was only a semicircle. We were sitting up there as Omer was talking about the theater’s amazing acoustics. She asked if anyone wanted to sing, and the group fell silent. I started humming Don’t Stop Me Now (see, I brought it up earlier for a reason!) and Solomon asked me if I wanted to go down and do it together. Of course! I was initially reluctant because I wanted to hear the acoustics for myself, but if nobody else was gonna do it, then why not us? So, we get down there, and, despite there being three or four other tour groups, sing about half of the song like champs. We had so much fun down there, and we got gold stars on our foreheads afterwards too! The acoustics did make their way to our ears, as we could hear them singing along with us, despite it being lagged by about a second. (note, the effect was compounded, as we were hearing the lagged version of them singing along to us, also lagged).

But the Caesarea shenanigans had only just begun. The next step on our tour was to look at the emperor’s hot tub, which was right on the sea. It was fed by a different water system than the ocean, so it could be kept warmer, but it was nearly indistinguishable from the Mediterranean. I could only dream of having a hot tub that looked like that! Our next stop was to the hippodrome, next to the seaport. The seaport was the first deep-water port ever, built without the help of a bay. They floated out rafts to their precise location, then flooded them carefully so they’d sink to the correct spot. I could only imagine all the marine engineering that went into the design of this thing! You’d have to take into account currents and waves for sure, and I would imagine they messed up a few times too, no? In the hippodrome, Omer thought of an “injury proof” way for us to get excited about ancient horse racing. She decided to host a speed-walking competition for us, in which, not everybody wanted to participate. But I certainly did. Due to me not realizing which rock she was talking about, my first place out of the gate was quickly lost by me not taking the turn I was supposed to. I still feel like I asserted some kind of weird speed-walking nerd dominance there.

The big Caesarea incident happened right after that, though. We were walking towards the visitors’ center, and there was this ancient wall. Meghan, Solomon and I were talking pictures real quickly in front of it, and Solomon and I decided it would be a great idea to climb the wall! As I got high up onto the wall, I put my hand on a giant stone and pulled it straight out of the wall. Both the rock and I came tumbling down, and everyone who saw it was more flustered than to yell at me or be angry. I think we were just all so confused as to what just happened and why we were up there, but I somehow escaped being yelled at. Instead, I just got teased endlessly throughout the rest of the trip. This earned me the paper plate award “Demolition Crew” at the very end.

After that debacle we headed to the visitors’ center, where we saw a video about Herod’s construction of the port and the wall that I had just desecrated. Herod was originally not loyal to Caesar when he ascended to the throne, rather one of the two leaders he had to kill to get there. Herod was brought to Rome, and nearly executed because it was assumed he could not be trusted. Herod swore his loyalty to Caesar, and returned to build the magnificent city of Caesarea, complete with the marvel of the port. When he was gone, he learned of schemes by his wife to replace him. I can’t remember what he did with her, but, her fate was shortened. Later in life, his sons also turned against him, mostly because he became a tyrannical ruler. He had them jailed, then killed. Despite his rage and tyranny, he did do amazing things for the city, and Caesar was impressed by his loyalty upon his visit to consecrate the port. The museum accompanying the video was also very cool, showing a history of the deep-water port, including some ancient tuns, models of ancient boats, different kinds of marble brought back from ports, and recovered statues. Meghan’s input in the marble was super interesting, as she was describing to us the benefits and defects in all the marble samples picked out.

That was the end of our time in Caesarea, potentially my favorite city we visited. We then headed down to Shuk Carmel in Tel Aviv, where we would come to think of as the center. Since it was right before Shabbat, the shuk was packed. This is where we learned the word סליחה, slicha, meaning excuse me! We were calling slicha out left and right, trying to get through the crowd. We only had one hour to eat and find a gift for our Mysterious Moses (secret Santa) that we were going to do that evening. We found a restaurant halfway through the shuk that looked good. I got a schnitzel pita whereas everyone else got a falafel pita. But the lady also gave us, for free, some salads and pickled veggies to go along with it. I was the only one to try the cabbage, and that was a bad move. Like, really bad move. I have a sneaking suspicion that that gave me food poisoning, and for the rest of the trip, I wasn’t feeling 100%. I started to get some energy back about two days later, but for the next ~48 hours, I felt completely out of commission. Like, struggled to get out of bed, very fevery and achy, throwing up, and lots and lots of diarrhea. I had gone to the bathroom four times in the middle of the night that following night. Anyways, that’s the gross part, and I’ll keep the rest less gross. But do know, that for the rest of this journal, I was needing to urgently break away from the group and run, nay, sprint to go find a bathroom. The saddest part was that the lady at the shuk just wanted us to enjoy. She brought us out extra appetizers, told us not to worry about them, and not to pay until after we’ve already enjoyed our food. She came out regularly to check on us, despite being the only one running the restaurant from the front end. We went looking around for some gifts next, and I found this small sheep that had prayer scrolls that looked like wool, so I figured that was a nice gift. I really didn’t know my person at all, so I got a pretty neutral gift. Solomon also saw these really funny looking flower sunglasses that totally fit his style. He had to get them, and they became a staple for the rest of the trip.

We got back on the bus and drove to our Tel Aviv hotel, which actually, was not in Tel Aviv, but Ramat Gan, which is a high-rise district outside of Tel Aviv. We stayed at the Leonardo City Tower, and upon leaving the hotel for the last time we were told of Justin’s horror story last time he stayed here. He said that when they went into the hotel to check in, he was informed that they had canceled the reservation for seemingly no reason. When he asked if there were any available rooms, the guy said there are only a few left. He said, well that’s at least one, so give it to me! And the hotel guy stayed reluctant. Eventually, he got the room, only to find that it was covered in mold. Justin came back down, and requested a different room, to which he was told the all the rooms were like this. He was like what the hell? before eventually convincing the guy to give him a new room. But the room key didn’t work. So he came down, asked for a new room key, and the new one didn’t work either. So, the hotel staff guy, who Justin already hated enough at this point, came up with the physical key. But as they were in the elevator, the elevator stopped and began to fall for like five seconds before the safety mechanism caught. There was also something about Justin not being allowed to put his bags in his room because his group was eating, to which Justin responded that he’s an adult and a guest at the hotel and can respectfully do whatever the hell he wants with his stuff, but I’m not sure exactly where that whole thing fits in. Anyways, our stay was more pleasant than that, but as Justin was telling us that, he had us all laughing really hard. He does a better job of telling that story than I do…

After getting into our rooms, we headed down to the hot tub to relax and admire the view of Tel Aviv in the sunset. We then went up to a room that would become our activities room for the next day or so and did our mysterious Moses (or as Omer called it, secret Moses Harry Potter). I ended up receiving my gift from this guy named Myles. And honestly, I’m a little surprised Myles hasn’t come up yet, because, well, he was a total trip and an icon of the week. My opinions on him are mixed, but here goes an attempt at an explanation of Myles. First off, the kid looks like Jesus. Like long curly hair, thick beard, olive skin. We all called him Jesus by this point, and later on, in Jerusalem, he’d take that role in full force. Second, he was always talking. During Eyal’s lecture, he asked a million questions, each about a paragraph in length, and whose focus was neigh impossible for a native English speaker to understand, let alone a second language English speaker. He was the only one of us to come with conversational level Hebrew, so he was often conversing with the Israelis, however, I get the sense that his vocabulary had a higher swear word to normal word ratio than your average learner. Finally, in terms of not shutting up, he would talk constantly about sex. I know he’s never done it, but he was always talking about it. I honestly could not stand it by the end. I suppose he’s a bit of a dichotomy, because he always showed genuine interest in the things we were doing and talking about, but also, frustrated the fuck out of me sometimes. Anyways, he got this kippah for me in the shuk, and I really like and appreciate it. It’s white and knit, and I wore it all of Shabbat and when we were in the Old City in Jerusalem.

From there, many of us expected a service, but instead, we just went straight to dinner. You could feel the disappointment in the group, that we didn’t have a real Shabbat service. Apparently the excuse was that on the last Birthright group one of our staff led, the kids were not enthused in the idea of a Shabbat service. So they decided we wouldn’t be either, but the opposite couldn’t be truer. Either way, the food at dinner was quite good, but I was starting to lose my appetite at this point so I didn’t eat too much. They had us play this dumb game involving walking in circles and forming triangles to help us find someone we didn’t know to sit by, but what ended up happening is that two friend groups ended up scattered across each table, and everyone still sat with their friends.

After dinner, they tried to get us to play some games. The most successful of these was a silly game of charades we played. The charades started out pretty easy and lame, but the energy really kicked off when a girl who also would not shut up and who would get frustrated easily decided to do a charade. She went out into the hallway, and we were informed secretly of what she was going to be through our other staff, Allison, on the outside. Justin told us to, at all costs, not guess the correct answer of flying an airplane. When she was led in, we were screaming crazy things like playing hopscotch, buying something from the shuk, and doing a backflip. She got real frustrated, and we were all had a good time with it (except for her, as she was purely confused). The look of relief on her face after she was told the plot against her was priceless. I went soon after, placing my hands on my hips, making a triangle, and spinning around in a circle. I was acting out “shawarma.” It took a little longer, but everyone found my acting funny once it was guessed correctly. We played some other games, but the last one, which was like mafia in principle, but involved no waking up in the middle of the night, really flopped and everyone went up one by one to their rooms. Since I wasn’t feeling good, Solomon, Liv, Meghan, Molly, and Adam Adam (an Israeli) came to my room and we talked for a while before going to bed.