FUN-travel: Holy Land – Haifa To Tel Aviv, Israel – Day 16
May 13, 2013 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on FUN-travel: Holy Land – Haifa To Tel Aviv, Israel – Day 16
The ABC’s of The Holy Land
A = Awesome
B = Bummer
C = Celebration
Caesarea
Trip Day 70 – Tuesday, April 9 – Haifa to Tel Aviv, Israel – cool, windy, cloudy turns to sunny, breezy – low 70’s
Baha’i Gardens
- 6:30 – wake up
- 7:00 – warm machine cappuccino – typical breakfast buffet – make sandwiches for later
- 9:00 – take off for Tel Aviv
- 1st stop – view Baha’i Gardens from bottom
- 2nd stop – view Baha’i Gardens from top (can’t go in unless you have a group but don’t need to)
- 9:45 – drive to …
- 3rd stop – 10:15 – Caesarea – port city built by Herod the great between 29 – 22 BC – once seat of Roman rule
- A – impressive Roman aqueduct & excavated fortress
- 11:45 – head on to Tel Aviv
- 4th stop – 12:30 – Nachalat Binyamin Market – only on Tuesday & Friday – several blocks of art vendors including jewelry, clothing, paintings, etc
- 2:00 – arrive Rothschild Hotel
- C – get upgraded to suite w/huge living room
- 2:30 – walk back to market – wanted to let Yuval our guide go home & want more exercise
- 2:45 – burger break @ Agadir – Angus beef, fries, drink, salad – $18 – enough for 2!
- 4:30 – back to hotel for room R & R
Nachalat Binyamin Market
- 7:15 – walk to Herbert Samuel – restaurant recommended by Yuval – fusion food
- 1st course – salmon sashimi w/habanera sauce
- 2nd course – tomato salad everyone’s trying to copy – homemade bread basket
- 3rd course – shrimp & calamari on homemade pasta w/artichokes
- Wine – Yarden Syrah from special vineyard I can’t remember – really good!
- C – so ready for a change of food & this was wonderful! – most expensive meal and worth!
- 9:30 – nice stroll back to hotel
Caesarea
FF – (FUN-fact) – The Baha’i Gardens are splendidly manicured and tiered up the hill surrounding the impressive golden-domed Baha’i Shrine.
More FF – Haifa lies on the Mediterranean coast at the foot of Mount Carmel
FUN-travel: Holy Land – Sea of Galilee to Haifa, Israel – Day 15
May 10, 2013 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on FUN-travel: Holy Land – Sea of Galilee to Haifa, Israel – Day 15
The ABC’s of The Holy Land
A = Awesome
B = Bummer
C = Celebration
El-Jazzar Mosque
Trip Day 69 – Monday, April 8 – Galilee to Haifa, Israel – hazy sun – high, 70’s – National Holocaust Day
Safed Mosque
- B – wake-up 3:30 – 5:30 – 6:30 (ready for my own bed & pillow)
- 7:00 – machine cappuccino
- 8:00 – pack up to check out
- 9:00 – pick up – drive to …
- 1st stop – 9:30 – Safed – highest town in Israel – one of the Four Holy Cities according to tradition and Kabalistic studies (birthplace of Kabbalah) – see oldest synagogue
- 10:00 – 11:00 – walk around artist colony – narrow streets & alleys filled w/sculptures, paintings, jewelry
- B – another sand storm coming in
- 2nd stop – 11:45 – Beit Jann for Druze Hospitality w/local residents
- A – top of hill can see Lebanon (on a clear day) & huge flocks of migrating storks
- 12:30 – lunch – huge spread of food – 10 different salads/dips/olives w/pita – 3 hot dishes – lentils w/bulgur, chicken, liver & onions – VG! – couldn’t possibly eat it all!
- 1:15 – drive to east coast of Israel
- 3rd stop – 2:00 to 3:00 – Rosh Hanikra – grottos are cavernous tunnels formed by sea action on soft chalk rock – total length 200 meters – branching off in various directions w/some interconnecting segments – tiny cable car takes us down – in past only access was from sea by experienced divers
Rosh Hanikra Grotto
- 4th stop – 3:30 to 4:45 – Akko (historic Acre) – most complete, charming, old walled, port city in Holy Land – Ottomans, Crusaders, Romans, Phoenicians all ruled here – get to go in Mosque of El-Jazzar – Turkish style w/recycled columns from Roman ruins
Crusader City in Akko
- 5:30 – arrive Haifa – Colony Hotel – cute little boutique right in center of town w/view of Baha’I Temple & gardens
- A – happy hour – nice cold beer in lobby fridge
- A – lots of trees & clean streets
- 8:00 – dinner across street – huge salad is enough for us – service just so-so
- A – good wine from winery tour yesterday
FF – (FUN-fact) – The Ottoman’s rebuilt on top of the ruins of the Crusader city. The original streets lie 25 ft below and include a network of underground passageways along with many well-preserved buildings.
More FF – We are really impressed with how good Israeli wine is. Our favorite so far is the Yarden Syrah and they have a distributor in New York.
WOW Word-Of-the-Week #457: Failure
May 8, 2013 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on WOW Word-Of-the-Week #457: Failure
Failure – a person or thing that is unsuccessful or disappointing.
Do you see failure as a negative? Have you ever turned a failure into a success by learning from your mistake? Would you find it embarrassing to share your failures publicly?
I saved a January LA Times article written by Nita Lelyveld titled, “A boss’ convincing fails pitch.” She writes, What if you were asked to write your failures on a wall, in indelible ink, for everyone to see? Would you make a confession? Would you bare your soul? What if the person doing the asking was your boss?
Jeff Stibel, chief executive of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., likes to keep his Malibu headquarters hopping. He came up with the Failure Wall one night late in 2010 when he was having a glass of wine with his wife. They were toasting a business success. Stibel said he found failure more fruitful.
He said, “I love celebrating successes – we do it all the time – but personally they do nothing. I can never tell whether it was lucky, whether it was the right time, whether it was an accident. But when I fail, I always know why I failed and I usually don’t make that mistake twice.”
He started his Failure Wall late one night with the help of his assistant. They started by stenciling quotations from famous people on a white 15’ X 10’wall. “Then, with a permanent Sharpie, Stibel scrawled what he deemed a personal failure: He’d waited too long to start having kids. Others soon followed.”
All disclosures are signed. That’s part of the idea. To grow from mistakes, you have to own them.
This week’s focus is on fruitful failure. How would it feel to keep track of your failures like you do your successes? Could you openly bare your soul to your boss? Have you ever had a positive experience as a result of a failure?
FUN-travel: Holy Land – Sea of Galilee, Israel – Day 14
May 6, 2013 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on FUN-travel: Holy Land – Sea of Galilee, Israel – Day 14
The ABC’s of The Holy Land
A = Awesome
B = Bummer
C = Celebration
Trip Day 68 – Sunday, April 7 – Sea of Galilee, Israel –sunny, not – high, 80’s
African Catfish
- 7:00 – machine cappuccino – not bad
- 9:00 – start tour
- 1st stop – 9:15 – Tabgha – one of most important Jesus sites in Galilee – where he fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread & 2 fish – up hill to Mount of Beatitudes – location of Sermon on the Mount
- 2nd stop – 10:00 – Hula Valley Nature Reserve – 800 acres – home to 1000’s of birds & animals – planked walkways over wetlands – see African Catfish – turtles – Nutria – home to 500,000 migrating birds as well – flocks of storks flying overhead
- 3rd stop – 11:30 – Gamla National Park – center of Golan Heights – features include 150 ft waterfall – highest in Israel – ancient walled city built on slope of very steep hill surrounded by cliffs – raptor observatory is home to largest nesting colony
Mount of Beatitudes
- 4th stop – 1:15 – Talmudic Village of Qatzerin – ancient village replica
- 5th stop – 1:30 – lunch – Falafel sandwich w/the works – VG!
- 6th stop – 2:00 – Olive Press Mill – tour w/talk on how it’s made & store to get you to buy stuff
Gamla National Park
- 7th stop – 3:00 – Golan Heights Winery – 8 different owners – 5.5 million bottles per year – taste 3 types
- 4:45 – cold beer @ Kibbutz overlooking gardens & Sea of Galilee
- A – good thing we got here when we did – tomorrow is National Holocaust Day – so no alcohol after 5 pm until tomorrow night
- 7:30 – dinner again just so-so – typical buffet
- 8:00 – wine on the balcony!
FF – (FUN-fact) – The Sea of Galilee is actually a fresh water lake.
More FF – A Kibbutz is basically a co-op, where everyone works for the common good. They are socialists but need to be capitalists to make it work.
Talmudic Village
WOW Word-Of-the-Week #456: Oligarch
May 1, 2013 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on WOW Word-Of-the-Week #456: Oligarch
Oligarch – a member of a small governing faction.
Have you ever seen this word before? Do you like learning words even if you’ll probably never use them?
While we were traveling on our last trip, the only newspaper I ever saw written in English was the UK Herald Tribune (and that wasn’t very often.) I remember reading an article about the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky who died from hanging. So I looked up the word and the definition didn’t make sense to me.
Boris Berezovsky
Then I asked my tour guide what it meant and he said, “It refers to Russians who are nouveau riche.” And then when I got home the LA Times featured an AP article written by Tom Hays titled, “STARS, COLORFUL CHARACTERS CITED IN RUSSIAN MOB POKER CASE.”
Hays writes, “It’s a case teeming with colorful characters: a reputed Russian mob boss once accused in an Olympic scandal, a wealthy art world impresario who hung out with Leonardo DiCaprio, and a woman named Molly Bloom who gained a celebrity following by hosting them at high-stakes poker games.”
“The steep rise in wealth among the upper class in the former Soviet Union has driven the insatiable appetite for sports betting around the globe. Prosecutors say the US ringleader was living in an apartment one floor below Donald Trump. He oversaw a network of Internet sites that formed ‘the world’s largest sports book’ catering ‘almost exclusively to oligarchs living in the Ukraine and the Russian Federation.”
So then I went to wikpedia and found this explanation. “Business oligarch” is a near-synonym of the term “business magnate”, borrowed by the English speaking and western media from Russian parlance to describe the huge, fast-acquired wealth of some businessmen of the former Soviet republics (mostly Russia and Ukraine) during privatization in Russia and other post-Soviet states in 1990s. Businessmen with great wealth from these countries were commonly labeled (simply) “oligarchs” in Russian regardless of whether they had real political power, as the term “oligarch” would imply.”
And there you have it! This week’s focus is on anything you want. Do you like learning new words? How often do you use the dictionary? Do you have better things to do with your time then look up words you’ll never use? Is there anything you’re curious about?