Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Eilat


We are finally back home in New Hampshire. I wasn’t able to post about the trip for the last two weeks since the hotels we were in did not have free wi-fi. 

The trip down to Eilat from Netanya was long, but we left the big storm behind. We stopped in Dimona to see a war memorial and learn about the area. It seems that Israel has many memorials like this. I noticed (again) how young the soldiers were who gave their lives for the state.

In Eilat we walked along the promenade. The area is very commercial now, lots of hotels, restaurants and shops. The last time I was there was in 1963 as a teenager and it was quite undeveloped at that time.  On the way there and while we were there, I was intrigued by the play of light on the mountains (that are in Jordan). I tried to take some pictures (from the bus) of the mountains and date groves, but they didn’t come out well.

We went to the underwater park and enjoyed looking at the fish and other sea animals. I took lots of pictures and will put the link at the bottom of this post. We decided not to do the glass bottomed boat and I think we saw more this way. Beautiful fish and corals.  The movie in the park was enjoyable too.


On another day we had a tour of a bird sanctuary, some fish ponds and learned about “mariculture”.  We saw both border crossings while we were in Eilat (Taba, Egypt and Aqaba, Jordan). The borders are close by.

In the evening we went to the city celebration of their 63rd anniversary (of the freeing of Eilat) at the Um Rash Rash site. There were students marching, speeches (in Hebrew), a slide show, singing, dancing, musicians and fireworks – good party.

We visited a history museum that is mostly for the children of the community, but we learned a lot there too. I enjoyed looking at all the fish statues (photo below).  We also visited the art gallery next to it which is celebrating the year of the woman with a gallery show about women.






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