One year and 37 weeks - The grand hiatus and adventure subpart b, around Neuchatel, and visiting Israel

The blog has been on a bit of hiatus over the last two months, part of the reason for which we'll get to in a little bit.  For the most of that time, we relaxed in and around Neuchatel, taking it easy.  At first, we were keeping things low-key as we had planned a weeklong trip to Greece for mid-September.  Unfortunately, the week before our trip, M fell ill.  She had been working on a team project with people from other sites for the week, and the team went out for dinner on Thursday night.  She started feeling ill at dinner and by Friday night, she couldn't keep anything down.  Thinking it was food poisoning or  nerves due to the upcoming trip (still anxious after the Spain debacle), she scheduled an appointment with a doctor to try to treat whatever it was before the Greece trip.  It turned out that the cause of illness was neither a bacteria, virus or mere anxiety; M was going to have a baby!

Feeling pretty awful and stressed out, we decided the best course of action was to cancel the Greece trip. M didn't think she could handle travel stress on top of constant nausea with 90 degree plus temperatures. We bit the bullet and cancelled what we could for the trip and ate the rest of the costs.  Instead, we took the following week off from work to relax.  Canceling the trip did allow us to experience some of the activities going on in Neuchatel, we would have missed otherwise.

As mentioned, 2011 is the 1000th anniversary (Le Millenaire) of Neuchatel.
  From 16-18 September, there were concerts throughout the town as part of the festivities.  K wandered down on Friday and Saturday to see some shows (Maceo Parker made sweet love to the town on Saturday night, despite some rain), and both K & M saw a Sunday afternoon show with plenty of dancing in the Place des Halles.
  The following weekend, the Swiss air patrol put on a show over the lake.  We missed most of it, because we had traveled to the nearby village of Le Landeron for their annual, giant flea/antique market. We have visited Le Landeron previously, and it was interesting to see the entire town converted into an open air bazaar.

  The Millenaire festivities ended with the 2011 grape harvest festival (Fete des Vendanges), the weekend of 23 Sept.  K went down to see the Guggenmusik parades and confetti cannons in full swing, as well as enjoying some wine.  Weeks later, he's still finding confetti bits in his shoes, jacket, and wallet.
  K and M went down on Sunday to check out the Midway, to eat some "ethnic" fair food, and deep-fried-spiral-cut-potatoes-on-a-stick (food on a stick that is subsequently fried, is a fair-gustation must; plus we had enjoyed the sticked-spiraled-fried-tater during the previous year while wandering the fete with Christina).
  Sunday evening finished the fete with a humongous fireworks display.  We watched from our deck, and the 35+ minutes of fireworks were truly impressive.  Bon Anniversaire, Neuchatel!

Walking the peat bog trail

  In October, K was driving to Le Locle quite a bit for work, and had passed through another valley, NW of Neuchatel a few times, and had noticed quite a bit of fall color.  About the same time, the local paper had an article on the fall color in the peat bogs in that same valley, so one fine weekend afternoon, we drove over to Les Ponts-de-Martel to see fall color and check out the bog.
  Having visited peat bogs during our Easter weekend in Ireland, some of the content was familiar, but we had never thought of Switzerland as a peat bog locale.  Decades after peat harvesting (mining?) activities had ended, one can still see the human impact on the valley.

  On 30 Oct, M caught an early morning train to Zurich, to then fly to Israel for work.  A few days later, K trained to Geneva, to spend the night in a hostel, to catch an early morning Easyjet flight to Israel, to spend the weekend with M exploring.
  The hostel was a pretty good deal, but two of Ken's "roommates" snored to beat the band, so it made a long night.  On the flight to Tel Aviv, K had a window seat, so was able to see some of the interesting topography passing below.  The plane passed near several Greek islands and over Rhodes.

View from our hotel

  K's map-less cross-city wandering, and M's drive from work, ended at nearly the same instant in front of the hotel, so things worked perfectly.  We spent Thursday evening walking around the area, finding and eating dinner, and spending some time in the local Irish pub where K enjoyed a pint of Guinness.

  On Friday (think Saturday as the Israeli work week is Sunday to Thursday), we walked to the big bazaar/market in Tel Aviv and marveled at the variety of goods on display.  We then continued down a nearby street through the Friday art market.  And after a short pause, we headed down the shore to Jaffa, to see the REALLY old port city and the bazaar there.  In addition for being really old, Jaffa is known for the being the site of several "historical" happenings.  Named after Noah's son Japheth, it is supposedly the location from which Jonah launched his trip which ended with him in the whale's belly, it is where Andromeda was tied to a rock by her parents as sacrifice to a sea monster after they had taunted Poseidon (fortunately, Andromeda was saved by Perseus), and St. Peter resurrected a widow there.

M and K in Jaffa

The city has traditionally been where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all lived together, perhaps not always peacefully.  We walked around the old city area where we saw some ruins, walked across (and wished on) the Wishing Bridge, and saw some great views of neighboring Tel Aviv.  

 After all the walking, M's hip was hurting (we probably walked about 10 km, some on hills), so she spent Saturday relaxing at the hotel pool, while K went on a "Bauhaus" walking tour of Tel Aviv to learn a little bit more about the relatively young city (founded in 1909 in deserted sand dunes next to Jaffa).

Jerusalem / Gold Dome
of the Rock

  Sunday, we got up early, picked up our rental car and GPS, and headed for Jerusalem.  The rental car and GPS folks clearly explained that we were not to head into any Palestinian-controlled areas, even to the point that the GPS would not work in those areas.  This was a problem, as we planned to head to the Dead Sea after Jerusalem, which means driving through some nominally Palestinian-controlled areas.  After discussing our itinerary, the GPS lady scrolled through the settings, to re-enable the maps, and even programmed in our waypoints, so we were all set to go.

  The drive to Jerusalem was uneventful, although getting to the Jaffa Gate and parking the car involved a fair amount of stop and go driving, uphill, in our compact, manual-transmission rental car (as well as trying to keep as zen as possible with the aggressive Israeli drivers).  We dutifully followed our Frommer's walking tour, and had a great time.  We saw the Dome of the Rock, but couldn't get onto the hill, as it was the week of the Hajj, so the area was closed to non-Muslims.  We saw the Western Wall (holiest place in Judaism), where K put on a "tourist yamulke" to get close (think of nice restaurants giving you a coat and tie to sit down to eat).  We saw the Mount of Olives, along with the Garden of Gesthemane.

Church of the Holy Sepulcher

  Then, we walked to the Jewish Quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where under a single roof, they have the bedrock crack that held the true cross, the stone where Jesus was laid to be prepared for burial, and his tomb.  Where the Western Wall was fairly quiet and contemplative, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was busy and crowded.  The relics were vaguely interesting, but we were probably more struck by the decorations on the walls and ceilings, including some magnificent, sparkly mosaics.
  We had a quick lunch and then drove on to the Dead Sea.  On the way, the drive took us through pretty empty desert.  We did see some huts, and the poverty in the area is striking.  But, what struck us more, was why in the world anyone would fight over this empty, barren, desert.  After 30 minutes of desert driving (seeing some camels ready to pose with tourists), we caught site of the Dead Sea, and shortly thereafter reached our destination.  After changing, and reading all the warning signs (don't drink the water; don't get the water in your eyes; don't submerge your head; don't taunt happy fun ball; etc) we made our way down some steps to the shore.

Floating in the Dead Sea

  The Northern end of the Dead Sea is supposed to be muddy, and it was.  Lots of dark, dark, mud, but so fine it was like silt.  We both marveled as we bobbed around like styrofoam, with barely any part of us underwater.  While floating reclined, it was actually difficult to push a leg or arm underwater, as it would just pop back up, lacking leverage to hold it down.
  After climbing out, M felt the salt burning her, so we rinsed off and headed back to Tel Aviv.  We had to pass through one security checkpoint (also requiring stop and go driving up a hill, in the manual-trans rental car; with all that darned empty desert, K thinks that positioning the checkpoint at the top of a hill is an intentional jerk-move).

Western Wall in Jerusalem

Monday morning, the Israeli labor unions held a 2hr strike, causing virtually no real disruption, but Easyjet decided to cancel all flights for 28 hours, so K was "stuck" in Israel.  As there were some important meetings back in CH, we bought an extra ticket on M's flight and we had an uneventful return home (although we did have to go through 5 security checks at the airport; why in the world they make it harder to leave the country than to enter is beyond us).

Lessons learned:
1) Positives of having a baby in Switzerland: a) the basic, mandatory insurance in Switzerland covers a lot of prenatal care and the cost of delivery, b) maternity leave is quite good - our site offers a little bit more than what's mandated by the government - M can have up to 18 weeks of maternity leave with full pay
2) Negatives of having a baby in Switzerland: a) no good access to American food cravings - also forget it if you "need" something in the middle of the night-out of luck, b) not really negative, but there are no citizenship rights for someone born in Switzerland, c) only understand about 80% of what the doctor's are saying - a lot speak only a little bit of English
3) Israeli drivers are jerks.
4) The sand on Tel Aviv beaches is crazy soft, like baby powder.
5) The Dead Sea is considered the lowest place on earth: 423 meters below sea level.  According to Wikipedia, it is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean.  (As it is Wikipedia, I would take it with a grain of salt...pun intended.)
6) In Israel: Irish food - good (the Irish pub bartender even drew a shamrock in Ken's Guinness), Mediterranean food - good, Middle Eastern food - good, Italian food - good, Asian food (thai, japanese) - good, Mexican food - not so good (mozzarella is not an acceptable substitute for queso blanco or Monterey Jack, and parmesan does not go on an enchilada, ever - M's food tasted more Italian than Mexican, K's fish tacos were better)
7) Maceo Parker is incredibly funky today.  I can only imagine his stage presence decades ago with James Brown, Parliament, and Prince.
8) Neuchatel throws one heck of a birthday party!