Coming home

After 11 days of travel and 2,500+ photos, I'm ready to go home. I'm
enjoying the free wifi in the Tel Aviv airport and was reminded of my
homeland (above)

Vista Pt

Today, we left Jerusalem and headed east to the Dead Sea. Our first
stop was Masada... a cool fortress on the top of giant rock. The
above photo is the view from the top, overlooking the Dead Sea. The
mountains in the distance are in Jordan. We then headed to a resort/
spa for a few hours to play in the water and relax in the sun. Since
the Dead Sea is 6x saltier than the ocean... you are incredibly
bouyant. The water feels like oil and tastes horrible. Floating on
my back, I rested, and slowly floated around the beach area...very
theraputic.

Wailing Wall

Tonight, we went to the Western Wall and toured the tunnels that go
along the entire length underground. It was incredible to see the
giant (500+ ton) stones cut to make the 2nd temple... and pretty
special to walk along the same roads built 2,000 years ago.

Never again

Today, we had a somber morning as we visited the new holocaust
memorial museum, Yad Vashem. The new museum was finished a couple
years ago and is impressive and moving. The museum bulidling is a
giant prism, with rooms of the sides. The above photo is from one end
that cantilevers over a hillside and overlooks Jerusalem.

IDF

Yesterday, we had a special visit to the Hatzor army base. During the
presentation, an alarm went off, and our presenter, a commander of the
Scorpion F-16 fighter pilot, bolted out of the room. He's on "5-
minute alert", which means he has to be able to jump into a plane
within 5 minutes at at point. Fortunately everything was ok (a
foreign aircraft failed to make contact at the appropriate distance).
Later, our buses pulled up beside the runway, as 6 F-16s took off...
the sound was pretty loud. I couldn't take photos on the base, but
above is the photo of a decomissioned plane, at the edge of the base.

Shalom Mediterranean Sea!

My fun travels in Jordan are now over. Petra and Wadi Rum were
amazing. It was sad to leave Jordan, but I'm now ready for the Israel
Trek. The weather is perfect here in Tel Aviv, and I've already spent
an hour on the beach soaking in the sun. Above is the view from my
hotel room right now.

Another crusade

I'm at the treasury in Petra right now... absolutely incredible. (this post was originally made May 22, but didn't get out of by iPhone outbox until now)

Megapixel

Here's a shot of the mosaic on the floor of St George's church in
Madaba. It was huge (17 meters x 7 meters), old (560 AD),
informational (covered all of the holy sights from modern day Egypt,
Jordan, Israel, and Syria), and intricate (approx 1.5 million pieces
of stone). Only a third of the original remains... but it is very
impressive. The photo is zoomed in on Jerusalem.

Holy sights, batman

Our second day in Jordan took us to St. George's church in Madaba for
an incredible mosaic, Mt Nebo for a great view of the Jordan river
valley, Dead Sea Panorama restaurant for lunch, and Bethany-by-the-
Jordan (where Jesus was baptized), where I dipped my toe in the Jordan
river..

The above photo is from our lunch view; 1,000 feet over the Dead sea.

Largest shawarma, ever

I just began my Middle East trip. We are starting with four nights in
Jordan. Today we saw Jerash, an incredibly well preserved Roman
city... complete with temples, large ampitheatres, and plazas. In the
evening, we stopped by "the most famous shawarma shack in Amman."
While the food lived up to the reputation, far more interesting was
the largest shawarma machine I have ever scene. Here's a photo of
them adding a new rack of meat (lamb):

Life update

I am now at the end of my MBA at Harvard Business School.  After two years of fun, I've decided to head back to California, and will work for Apple in September.  Until then, I will travel to my hearts content... or until I run out of money (probably the latter).  Expect future posts and twitters from me as I travel over the next four months.  Later this month, I'll head to San Francisco for a week, then Jordan, Israel, Los Angeles, then back to Boston for graduation.

This is now my new home

I've decided to point my personal domain, alecdet.com, to this blog in hopes that I now manage this blog more frequently with life updates and photos from my adventures.  Here's the link to my old website, and my old photo homepage.