Gesher World Tour 2011

Photos: Israel

(download)
I've finally finished editing and geotagging the photos from Israel.  It was a great short visit, heavy on family, but we managed to take a in a few sights.

Istanbul -> Amman: Meeting People

By Ari - It's been an interesting couple of days.  We left Turkey this morning and we're currently sitting in the Royal Jordanian travel lounge in the Queen Alia airport, waiting to to catch our flight to Tel Aviv.  (Which is, in itself, a somewhat surreal circumstance to be in).

One of the interesting about traveling as a pair is that you spend less effort meeting people along the way since you have each other to keep you company.  On our final night in turkey, we resolved to chat up the next people we saw who looked interesting. 

On our last night in Turkey, we ended up at a very hip and amazing restaurant in our neighborhood, spurred on, as with much of our trip, by The Lonely Planet guide.  The food was amazing and the seating was of the community table style.  A German couple, about our age, was seated next to us.  At some point, I nudged Ambassador Gesher (that's Nicole) into breaking the ice and we jumped off into what felt like hours of conversation with them.

They were born and bred in and around Dresden and had some pretty interesting family history.  Stephen works for T-Systems, the IT services arm of Deutsche Telekom, and happens to do recruiting for software engineers (coincidence number one).  His girlfriend of 12 years, Susan, work for Lufthansa, so they get to travel a lot. They've seen a lot of the US, Japan, and Europe. It even turns out they were on safari in South Africa just a month before we were (coincidence number 2).  He, it turns out, is also an avid photographer and we whipped out our Nikons and compared notes (coincidence number 3).  All in all a very pleasant evening of chatting.  The final coincidence: they had ended up for dinner at the same place as we had because of, you guessed it, The Lonely Planet guide recommended it.

Sitting in the lounge in Amman, we sat down next to what appeared to be an appropriately disheveled news crew. They were chatting about how they were having trouble getting all of their equipment shipped to the their next destination.  As we sat and listened to their jargon, one Mr. Tom Brokaw sat down - the talent had arrived.  It was his NBC news unit, en route to Saudi Arabia from Baghdad. Nicole chatted up the sound guy for a while before they had to go catch their flight.

And now it's off to Israel, the one destination we've both visited before.  We're looking forward to a place where we sort of know the language and it will be the only stop where we rent a car (it's been five weeks without driving - probably a record in my adult life!).

And of course, beckoning our road weary bones is our beautiful home by the Bay - it will be nice to be home at last.

Reporting from Amman,

--Ari Gesher

Nicole's Photos Part Deux: Siem Reap, Saigon, Paris, Istanbul

In a way, it seems like we've been moving through very different worlds on our trip. While its otherworldy beauty cannot be overlooked, Cambodia was a stark reminder of just how lucky we all are - it's a country where nothing seems to work quite right, and most of the people are uneducated. It's recovering, sure, but there's just so much that has already passed it by. To go from there to Saigon was shocking, and frankly, a bit of a relief. Vietnam is vibrant, bustling, non-stop, and has vestiges of both its French colonial past and a proudly Vietnamese culture. Paris was like visiting the mother ship. So many of the countries we have seen (the USA included) seek to emulate the French aesthetic of beauty. We were lucky to be there for the first few days of spring, and after the fast paced, in your face, go go go of Asia - Ahhhh. It was glorious. Istanbul has been our home base now for the last 8 days, and tomorrow we move on to Israel. This city is layer upon layer of history, dense with culture. Islam is superimposed on Christianity (which has elements of the Classical world) with little ceremony. In a city with this much history, you really can't rebuild. You simply remodel.

(download)

Photos - Paris

From Ari: my second trip to Paris, Nicole's first in a decade.  26 hours from stepping off the Eurostar to stepping back on it. Finally made it to the Louvre. Paris is just so shockingly beautiful - the camera saw it everywhere I pointed it.  The French know something that the rest of us only ever kind of get - they have mastered the art of embellishment right up to the line of cheesy/gaudy without ever stepping over it.  And don't get me started on the food.  However, I will point out that they did have a Japanese restaurant named "The American Dream" and that's just plain weird.

(download)