Once Upon a Spring Break

I’ve been lax in continuing my tales from abroad, but as I have a moment, I figured I’d start off where I’d started. When I last left you, we were leaving Luxor in March. Fast forward through the paper writing season to Spring Break in April, when I was desperately attempting to forget the stress of weekly Arabic exams through my favorite venue, travel. A girl I’d met in orientation was planning a trip to Israel with a side trip to Petra in Jordan, which I thought was a great idea and subsequently was invited to go along on. I brought a better known friend, my travel buddy from Luxor with me.  As a group of six, we headed out from Cairo taking a bus to the Taba border crossing. We spent six hours getting to the border and half an hour getting out of the 100 meters of No-man’s-land, which was mainly because my travel buddy looks pasably Egyptian and forgot to conceal her Muslim studies homework, religious readings about radical Islam.  We sat awkwardly as she was drilled by the English speaking staff. Eventually, we were allowed to pass and caught a tax to take us to the resort town of Eilat. I was in shock going from religiously conservative Egypt to Israel, where the first people I saw were in a western resort, clothed not in long sleeves and leggings for modesty, but in speedos and bikinis.  After recovering, resisting the strong urge to offer the tourists clothing for the sake of modesty, we proceeded to find a restaurant and enjoy the tourist ridden boardwalk, where I went through sticker shock a the difference in Middle Eastern prices, Israeli prices, and tourist gauging.  We eventually headed to the bus stop, took a group cab to Jerusalem for 10 shekels more than the bus, arrived at 1AM, checked in and crashed in the hostel provided beds. Little did I know, my bed was filled with bed bugs destined to follow me back to Cairo and make three weeks of sleeping on tile floors a misery, which I usually would not mind. Come back on Monday to read about the redeeming features of the Holy City, the part where I was well-fed happy, and rested.