Beach in February!

After we finished Ulpan and took the final exam we ran to get to Eilat. Literally ran. I was the last of the group to finish the exam and I was the one who forgot their passport. So we grabbed a cab and booked it to the Central Bus Station. We got through security and then ran to try to get our tickets. However, do to a language barrier we stood in front of an ATM for about five minutes before realizing that we had to go somewhere else to get our tickets. We found the bus by a miracle and then began our five hour trek to the south. With five hours after a long stressful week, one would think that I would sleep. No such luck. But there’s so much to see that it’s almost impossible to sleep. The desert is absolutely fascinating. Especially driving by the Dead Sea, the desert looks like what I would imagine the bottom of the ocean would be like. And since we did drive by the Dead Sea, the bus was going up and down the hills like a very slow rollercoaster. I didn’t notice until we went back, but apparently a lot of people did. I saw my first camel and also there were a few Bedouin camps with families shepherding huge herds of sheep and goats. Interestingly enough, since we were going to a beach community, the entire back row behind us was filled with orthodox Jews. And for the record, it seems no matter where you go that little kids smell like peanut butter. Since it seems like half this country smokes, we had to take multiple smoke breaks on the way down.  Not scheduled ones, but where we would stop to pick someone up and a bunch of guys (no women, just men) would scamper off the bus to smoke. We finally made it to Eilat and we made it to our hostel. Which was fantastic! It was nice and clean and we also got the added bonus of having our own room. We had to share a bathroom, but that wasn’t bad either. We got pizza and wandered around Eilat for a most of the night. We found a beach, with a huge boardwalk that took several hours to go through, and my friend got the random award for the night with a random shoe shopping excursion. The next morning was cloudy and cool, but with the sun out it was warm enough, so we changed into suits and wandered down to beach, when we realized that it was most definitely not warm enough to swim in the Red Sea. It was warm enough when the sun was out, but as soon as the sun went away it was cold and depressing.  So, we packed up and, we went walking with the intention of finding the Jordanian border. It was too late to go in, but we were close enough that we could walk and at least see it. So we started walking east. As you go east in Eilat, the hotels and resorts get more and more expensive. On the beach there’s a huge Hilton that looks like a sandcastle, and the King Herod resort is fantastic, not that we could actually go in, but there was a lot outside as well. Almost right on the Jordanian border, there’s an Orthodox beach, where the beach was completely enclosed and there were sides for the women and the men. We got to see Jordan and then had to head back, which made us realize exactly how far we had walked.  As part of our vacation, we made reservations at a really nice Brazilian restaurant that literally kept serving us food. As soon as we finished one appetizer they world bring us another. It was fantastic food, and I was so full afterwards it was very tempting to go to bed right afterwards. The next day there was much better and we spent the entire day at the beach. It was so much fun with the and the ocean, which was still really salty. The sun was relaxing and made it such great vacation to prepare for the new semester.