Somewhere in the mysterious North, we went to a quaint little town whose name I don't know, but I will refer to it as "wine town." It might have been Zichron Yaakov, but I'm not sure. All I know is, there were a whole lot of signs for wine stores (and no wine stores to be found). Anyway, the section of the village we were in was really cute. It reminded me of the wealthy shopping districts in many cities where people primarily walk around outdoors from shop to shop (something like Hillsboro Village in Nashville, or Hyde Park in Tampa).

In this village, the main shopping street was blocked off to traffic, and it was very cool. We watched a couple mime comedians advertise their act, then we ate at a McDonald's. The girl taking my order couldn't remember her McDonald's English lingo, and asked me, "Do you want to... you know... make it bigger?" That was cute. I almost bought Bridget a set of earrings and a necklace in this village, and I really wish I would have. If I wouldn't have been so rushed for time, I probably would've but I felt like I needed a little while to think about it since they were kinda pricey. They were sterling silver with some kind of coral colored stone in them.

The first picture shows a really weird picture being used as a placeholder in a frame for sale. The next two are pictures of that blocked off little shopping street. Then three are of a place called The Hobbit Pub, which I was surprised to find there. It wasn't open at that time (2:00pm) but I took a couple pictures of the ring, wizard, and hobbit iconography around the place. If I were back in Israel on my own, I would certainly visit this pub and have a pint of what must be the best beer on this side of the Brandywine.

The last picture of this set is a tiny little restaurant called The Wine Cellar. Dave Silverstein was trying to get a corkscrew, which we assumed we could find at a wine retailer. We assumed the Wine Cellar was the name of such a retailer, and spent no less than forty minutes looking for the place in an eighth-mile square area (the signs pointing our way were very confusing). Finally, we found it, underneath some building with a tiny entrance that was down a stairwell to what was literally the cellar. After all that, we discovered that it was in fact a restaurant, not a wine retailer. Anyway, it was probably one of the most unique restaurants I've ever seen (up there with Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa, Chalet Suzanne in central Florida, Avenue A Sushi in Manhattan, Mr. And Mrs. Bartley's Burger Cottage in Boston, Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room in Savannah, Rudy's BBQ, The Hula Hut, and Wanfu Too in Austin, The Salt Lick BBQ near Austin, and my locals Fat Willie's Fish Camp and The Columbia Restaurant). The area that you see in the picture is taken from the doorway. The entire restaurant is visible in the picture, so you can see just how quaint it is.

Ah, now we see the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. The second kibbutz we stayed in was on this beach. The beach area was really quite beautiful, as was the water, though if you looked closer or swam in it, you saw that it was actually quite polluted. No worse than the Gulf Of Mexico or other US beaches, but much worse than the Red Sea seemed to be (which we'll get to).

This was the kibbutz at which we did the barbecue, and at which I played in a bus vs bus soccer game. It was Bus 428 (Vanderbilt and UCF) vs Bus 429 (University Of Florida and ???). It was right after I'd sliced a hunk of toe off, so I played goalie. I made some great saves, but also let by one or two that I shouldn't have. It turns out that a couple of the guards on their bus were former professional soccer players who were also on the Israeli National Team. We had our ringers Jon Toub and Yair Reimer, who probably would've been pro in Israel. On the whole, a lot of fun, though we lost like 4-3 or something. Oh yeah, and there were three or four dead cats on the field we were playing on. Haha.

The beach consisted of a very large sandy area with soft, white sand, then a strip about three yards wide of shells, then the shore. As you can see, the shells on the beach were in much better condition than you generally find on beaches in the US. It was rare to find shells that were cracked, and they were very pretty. The first shot is of Job Toub, who kinda looks like a monkey, making a monkey face, then the shells. Then we have a couple shots of Dave Silverstein wearing a see-through bathing suit and saying, "Nobody look at me. I'm going to go change." So naturally, I took pictures of him and posted them to the web. Can't see anything anyway, but if he were here in person, I'd tell him I liked it and wink at him (inside joke). Then Jake, then Yair playing this beach paddle ball game and making muscles for the camera. The next show, if you look closely, shows a guard's M-16 peeking out from beneath his towel while he has gone swimming. So casual about their weaponry.

Late afternoon, we took a bunch of group pictures from a high point overlooking the water and the sun. We got some posed pictures, and everyone was laughing and joking and had a good time. Look at Kendra's sweet, sweet ass. I mean... at the sunburn.

Kendra was a funny girl. Maybe the largest discrepancy I've ever seen between her concept of how attractive she is and everyone else's. All the guys on the bus had a crush on her, and then she did something ridiculous on our last or second-to-last night there, but I don't want to say it on here. She was really sweet and funny and cute, though.

I took these because this Israeli soldier was just gorgeous and was standing there with the sun behind her, wearing the least soldier-ish thing possible, just looking amazing, while carrying her M-16. So then someone saw me taking a picture and asked her to pose with her gun, so I took that one too, hoping it could maybe go on the cover of some gun magazine. She's probably too fully clothed.

These are some others around that same time, featuring some local fishermen, our soldier Dekel with the sun behind him, and some coastline.

This was the closest we got to the West Bank. Technically, the West Bank border can be seen somewhere in this shot, but I'm not sure where. We were in a fortified kibbutz near the wall. They basically kept us out of any area where there was even the remotest of remote possibilities of any trouble, which meant we definitely didn't go into the West Bank. But actually, you'd think they deliberately chose our itinerary and travel routes so that we didn't even see the wall. We only saw the giant wall being constructed all around the West Bank one time on the whole trip, and it was while driving. And, it was not a very typical section of the wall.

The trip organizers and the people who fund it are big zionists and a major component of why they do the Birthright trips is that they are big zionists and want to convince Jews to make aliyah (return to Israel). So it makes sense that they would try to keep us away from seeing something that reflects very poorly on Israel and on the idea of living there.

This is in direct contrast to the experiences of a friend of mine Noelle Janka, who has spent a lot of time in Israel volunteering, mostly in the West Bank. She has a very different picture of Israel than I do, because of how our experiences differed. Politically, we're both pretty much in tune, but I look back on my trip and say, "What turmoil?" while all she sees in Israel is turmoil. Strange that the rest of the country can be seemingly so peaceful when there is such struggle going on in a large section of it (not to mention the hatred and violence from both sides that is just beneath the surface all over the country, waiting for the right religious affront to bring it out).