Around the West Coast

The western part of the island, just like the one on the east, has a volcano in the middle and various little towns and beaches scattered along the coast. There is also a coastal road connecting all these little towns and beaches, and we decided to spend an entire day exploring what it has to offer.

Although the road goes all the way around, its last portion (traveling clockwise) is also one-lane, even more narrow than the one in the eastern part. Since there doesn't seem to be anything particularly interesting on this stretch (except a shack selling "the best banana bread on the planet," according to our guidebook - which claim let's leave to the author's conscience - not to mention that we had plenty of very good banana bread left over from our Hana road trip) our original plan consisted of the following:

1. Start clockwise
2. See a couple of attractions along the way
3. Do NOT stop at Lahaina (the most happening town on the island and the only one that boasts having a downtown)
4. Instead, drive straight to Ka'anapali (one town over), snorkel near the famous Black Rock and have lunch at the equally famous Ka'anapali Beach boardwalk
5. Continue clockwise, stopping at the Nakalele Blowhole and possibly a couple more points along the way, to the furthermost attraction, called Olivine pools (right before the start of the one-lane stretch)
6. Turn around, drive to Lahaina, and spend the rest of the day there, including dinner on the waterfront and possibly some nightlife entertainment

This was a great plan, but it didn't quite come to pass... However, I still highly recommend it to those who'll learn from our mistakes.

Our first stop, very soon after passing Maalea, was the overlook near Mile Marker 8, which is supposed to be THE best place on the island for spotting whales. Apparently, for them this is also an overlook, for spotting people... they approach it a lot. Since we were there at the tailend of the whale season and haven't spotted a single whale so far, this was our best bet for seeing one. But no luck! - probably, they already started towards Boston... All we saw was a little sailboat, and we took a picture of it on the impossibly blue ocean, with South Maui and Mt. Haleakala in the background.

Next item on the list, ancient petroglyphs near the little town called Olowalu, proved to be quite elusive. Again, the guidebook seemed to provide perfectly detailed directions, and once again they turned out to be completely unreliable when applied to actual terrain. After a lot of wrong turns and circling around we finally asked a guy, who pointed us towards the petroglyphs, "such as they are." He was right on both counts: there is not much to see.

We returned to the coastal road, drove past Lahaina (according to plan) and stopped at the Whalers Village in Ka'anapali. Whalers Village is a collection of ridiculously overpiced shops selling items that you can totally live without, but it also has a few restaurants and, most importantly, a parking. You are not supposed to park there if you just go to the beach, but in our case we planned to have lunch at one of the restaurants, which both justified and validated our parking.

Ka'anapali beach is large and overcrowded, and makes you happy that you are staying in South Maui, away from the teeming humanity. Still, at the rightmost end of the beach (as you face the sea) there is a tall cliff called the Black Rock, which provides perfect snorkeling opportunities. There is a boardwalk along the beach, follow it to the end and then carefully swim out. "Carefully" because there are tons of snorkelers around, who don't necessarily look where they are going, as well as young daredevils jumping off the Black Rock (from about 17 feet up) so watch out for these, too.

Once you are past this initial stretch along the side of the cliff, it is beautiful and tranquil: lots of coral of various colors and shapes, tons of colorful fish and even some turtles. We spent maybe 40 minutes snorkeling along the cliff's tip, then Temma jumped off the Black Rock a couple of times and we went back to Whalers Village for lunch.

I very highly recommend our lunch choice: Leilani's Beachside Grill, an outdoor terrace with a garden-like setting right next to the boardwalk. It provides ocean view and people watching at the same time, and has a delicious lunch menu of fancy salads, sandwiches, a couple of simple entrees (including fresh local catch), and nice desserts. The slightly tricky logistical part was changing from our swimming attire into something more presentable. Temma and I opted for cover-ups, while Alex went and changed completely (there is a public restroom next door).

The first half of our plan thus successfully completed, we got back into the car and drove to mile marker 38, with the intention of hiking to Nakalele Blowhole from there. This is where we made the fatal mistake, which could have totally been avoided if we'd just taken into account our previous experiences with the guidebook... To make a long story short, we started the hike, realized that once again Andrew's so-called directions had nothing in common with the actual terrain, tried to find our way along the cliffs, in the confusion I badly sprained my ankle - hurt like hell!.. - and that pretty much put the lid on our plans for that day, and severely limited the rest of our vacation activities.

However, it needn't have happened that way. Instead, we should have driven another 1/2 mile, parked in a "wide turnout backed by rounded boulders" and hiked to the Nakalele Blowhole from there. The guidebook dismisses this hike as boring, and who am I to argue? - but it has one undeniable advantage: you can more-or-less see the blowhole from the parking lot, at least you can definitely see which way to go, and thus not rely on Andrew's warped sense of geography. When Alex finally made it to the blowhole, after almost an hour of mad scrambling along the cliffs, he could see the cars in the second parking lot from there. He is also the only one in our family who saw the blowhole (Temma returned with me to the car, which I managed to hobble back to, mainly because there were no other options). We waited for Alex in the car for just over an hour, because once he finally managed to find the blowhole, it was relatively easy to get back to the parking lot from there, following one of the inland trails. The problem was finding the blowhole itself...

Since we were on that road anyway, and unlikely to return in the remaining two days, Alex proceeded to drive to our last planned stop - Olivine Pools, and he and Temma went down there to check them out. It is a short, easy hike for anybody without a sprained ankle. The pools didn't look very inviting - maybe because of our family's dampened spirits - so they decided not to go swimming, just took this picture and returned to the car.

Finally, since we could no longer explore Lahaina on foot, as originally planned, Alex decided that it didn't make sense to turn around and return the way we came, and continued along the coastal road onto the one-lane stretch. This proved to be another mistake, because this portion of the road is even narrower and with fewer turn-offs than the one in the eastern part, so the travel was very slow, and then we got stuck behind a line of school buses - and as a result, it was only 3 hours after the accident that I finally got home and managed to put some ice on my throbbing ankle...

The incident/accident, no matter how you look at it, affected the last days of our vacation, limiting our activities. Still, Alex and I went snorkeling near 5 Caves on Saturday, because we remembered that at Makena Landing the road goes right up to the beach, which is narrow and pebbly (not sand) - so Alex managed to drop me off almost by the water edge and I hobbled in, while Alex parked the car and joined me in the water. We had a wonderful time, and one of the turtles rewarded my resilience by coming right up to me, less than arm's length, so it was very hard not to reach out and touch it. You are not supposed to touch the turtles, it rubs off their protective coating or something... our kayaking guide told us so. Also while at Makena Landing that day, we witnessed some kind of a wedding ceremony - with a bunch of people pushing the happy couple (who, truth be told, didn't actually look that happy) off in a long kanoe-like boat, while a female shaman with a wreath on her head was loudly blowing into a humongous seashell. Like that.

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Lahaina

Lahaina deserves a separate entry, even though the mishap with my ankle 2 days before the end of vacation robbed us of the opportunity to explore it in depth.

Still, we went to Lahaina twice: first for dinner at the Pacific'o on Saturday night (our last night on Maui), and then for a stroll/hobble along the Front street and lunch on the day of departure, because our flight was late in the afternoon.

Pacific'o is, in my opinion, the most romantic restaurant in Lahaina, which is saying something - because there are at least two dozen others vying for this title. It is right on the beach, with beautiful sunset views. Actually I liked the view even more than the food. The food was good; the view was spectacular. There happened to be another of those weddings on the beach, conducted literally in front of our table - minus the canoe, but the seashell-blowing priest/shaman very prominent... what are the chances of seeing two of those in one day? Then, as soon as the wedding was over, the sunset show began...

The guidebook claims that parking in Lahaina is impossible, but we didn't find that so. Maybe because we were not there during the "high season" - but we had no trouble parking near the 505 Front St. cluster of restaurants and shops on Saturday, and on Sunsday morning Alex repeatedly found street-side stalls along the Front street, to make my walking distances manageable. The whole Front street, which is the main street in Lahaina, is lined with souvenir shops, specialty stores, cafes and such; it is a pleasant place by day and is literally jumping at night. I highly recommend staying in South Maui but visiting Lahaina in the evenings, just for the sheer energy of the place.

Most of the historic and cultural attractions are also on Front street. First, there is the Banyan Tree park, which is a whole park made up by a single humongous banyan tree. There is also Pioneer Inn, which looks very old, and some other historic buildings, a former Chinese Temple (now a museum), and at the North end, towards Mala wharf - Jodo Mission, with its pagoda and a huge statue of Buddha, visible from the outside.

For our final meal on Maui, we selected a little cozy restaurant right at the water edge, called Honu. "Honu" means "turtle" in Hawaiian, and the restaurant is well named: as we were having lunch on the deck, turtles were constantly poking their heads out of the water, as if to say "goodbye"... A tiny lizard, called brown anole, was sitting on a pole right next to our table, with its bright-orange throat sac (dewlap) flickering on and off. Food was delicious, and so were the cocktails. The view down the coast was tranquil and beautiful. It was very sad to say "goodbye" to Maui, but we hope to come back someday...

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Columbus to Boston, Part 2

After lunch, it was finally time to visit the cave. Those of you who follow our adventures are probably aware that I love caves (also mines, and everything else underground or underwater), while my kids honestly have had quite enough of them... So this time, we compromised: we were going to the cave, but were not going to an anthracite mine later. Which is too bad - because it would have been very interesting, and right along our way, in Scranton... 

The cave, called Penn's Cave, is located in a town called Centre Hall near Rte 80, and I highly recommend it. It is "America's only all-water cavern", it is on The National Register of Historic Places, and you tour it by boat! Flat-bottom motorboats take about 20 people and spend about an hour total, first going through the cave's passageway (while the guide points out various formations along the way), then getting out into Lake Nitanee on the other side for a short spin, and finally coming back, more quickly, through the cave to the starting point of the tour. The cave has entrances on both sides, and therefore technically is probably a tunnel... But there are stalactites, stalagmites, "straws" and "cave bacon", and even bats, so I still consider it a cave. 

The temperature inside is around 52 degrees, so you'll need a sweatshirt or jacket even on a summer day. I was perfectly fine in sandals, though, and somehow this cave didn't feel as chilly as most of the other ones. 

So here is the cave's first entrance, the starting point of the tour. 

You can see more photos here. 

The previous night, Temma double-checked with me: "So, what is the plan for tomorrow? We are going to a cave, and then spending the night at a train station, right?" Bleak as the prospect might sound, she was absolutely right: we did spend the night in Scranton, at the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel, formerly the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Station. This is what the Grand Lobby looks like. 

Notice the original railroad clock on the wall to the right. And below that, in the far right corner, is the former ticketing office - now the hotel's reception desk.

Our room was on the second floor, somewhere around the place where you see the light on the opposite wall. It had sleep-by-number beds, which I didn't like, and otherwise was quite comfortable and plush. However, there were a few issues that seemed incongruous in a hotel of that class. Say, I was really surprised to find an empty bourbon bottle under the desk, although the room seemed to be adequately cleaned otherwise. And we got a wake-up call at 6:30 in the morning, which we emphatically didn't request... This really got me angry, because it threw our whole morning off, and I complained to the receptionist at check-out. He apologized profusely and seemed really embarrassed, but didn't provide any explanation. Back at home, though, I've found one. I discovered that the hotel is quite famous for being haunted, especially in baseball lore. Apparently, the ghosts are mostly active in the basement and on the sixth floor, but it looks like they might have extended their activities to the second floor on this occasion... A ghost must have spent the night under our desk, then gotten the wake-up call and left his empty bottle behind.

Columbus to Boston, Part 1

This vacation wasn't a vacation, as such. We dropped off David at The Ohio State University and had to get back somehow. 

On the way there, Alex and David drove the loaded family car in one day from Boston to Cleveland, along Rte 90, spent the night in Cleveland, and on the following morning drove the rest of the way to Columbus. Meanwhile, Temma and I flew into Columbus, as there was no space left for us in the car. We all converged on the university campus, where David moved into the dorm along with 50 thousand or so of his closest friends. 

We stayed the night at the Blackwell, which is a very nice hotel right on campus. It seems to be mostly run by the hospitality industry majors from Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State. They are doing a pretty good job with the hotel itself, though unfortunately the same isn't true for the adjacent restaurant. Maybe we were there just on an off day, but breakfast in an almost empty restaurant shouldn't take an hour! 

In our case, Blackwell's location right on campus was especially important, because it let us maximize our time with David (who already had various meetings and activities planned) before we kissed him goodbye and started driving the now-empty car back towards Boston... 

This is the view from our hotel room towards the footbal stadium on campus. 

People below are the tail end of a very long procession, which was walking past our window for more than an hour that morning, to get loaded into 175 buses and go to the Crew Stadium (not to be confused with Ohio Stadium in the previous photo) to the President's Convocation. And this is a photo of President Gee, taken by Alex on the move-in day. 

Since most of my time in Columbus has been spent on campus and/or crying, I have no clear impression of the city yet. Hopefully, it will develop during my subsequent visits, in the next 4 years. 

But for now, I'll start our trip report with the following day, when we were driving across Pennsylvania along Rte 80. We've decided that Rte 90 has been explored enough during our multiple trips to Niagara Falls, and wanted to see new places. The first of which was our lunch stop, Denny's Beer Barrel and Pub, the Home of the World's Largest Burger. Here it is. 

Denny's is home not just to the humongous burger, but also to burger-eating competitons, or "challenges". Contestants (or even 6-8 person teams) each get a 2-lbs, 3-lbs, or even a 15-lbs burger, which they have to finish within a certain time. If they do, their names are posted on a Winners' list (on a wall, as well as on the pub's website), along with their personal time. If they don't - their names are also posted, but on the "Couldn't quite do it" list. 

In case you are wondering, why would we go to such an unlikely place? - here is the answer. Apart from burger monstrosities, their menu contains all kinds of regular-sized burgers - as well as wraps, salads, soups, etc. - and beer... Having to eat lunch somewhere along that stretch of Rte 80 anyway, we figured that a restaurant specializing in burgers should be able to do them well. So I ordered an ostrich burger, and Alex an elk one (1/3 lbs each), while Temma decided to go with a "pizza burger" (drenched in pizza sauce) - and we were all quite happy with our selections. 

Jerusalem, Old City

The Old City of Jerusalem is not easy to write about. So many people have written so many different things about it... Unless you are a historian or an archaeologist, your own personal perspective on it is apt to be trite, or ignorant, or both (and even if you are, it might still be that). So with this disclaimer—because I am neither historian nor an archaeologist, and I'll do my best to avoid being trite, and to keep my ignorance to myself—here is what I love about the Old City.

It is like a human anthill. You might be following a street that turns into a staircase, leads up to a roof of a building, proceeds there for a while, gets back down... Other streets are completely enclosed in stone arches, so you cannot even see the sky, and as you walk there you are wondering: are there, at this moment, other people walking above my head, or under my feet?.. and you cannot help but feel yourself a part of very complicated system which you cannot quite understand, but which, hopefully, has some kind of its own communal intelligence—like an ant colony.

Thousands of years of civilization have left these layers—of soil, of stones, of desires, of emotions... In Jerusalem, time thickens and becomes tangible, you can almost touch it. And so does the intensity of emotions. Jerusalem is very personal to me; even its name, Yerushalaim, sounds like caress...

And emotions don't really need thousands of years, a few is enough... Here, for example, look at these photos:

Same people, same place... the one on the left is from our trip in 1999. David is 5... Temma is 18 months old.

And here is another pair: David and I in front of the Hurva synagogue, then and now... The synagogue sure looks different, but so does the couple in front of it... I don't know which change is more amazing.

What are you supposed to feel when your baby is taller than you? (Not necessarily a whole foot taller, like in this case...) For my take on this, see Irreverent Reflections of a Bar Mitzvah Parent, written in between of David's and Temma's Bnei Mitzvot, from the perspective of somebody who's been there, done that, seen what happens in the next few years—and is now about to embark on the next adventure. Having children is not just an accomplishment, but more of a spiritual journey (it is a process rather than a result)... and as such, deserves Timely Updates, too.

Israel, part 3: Acco

The day after visiting Ir David I came down with a flu, and had to miss the trip to Herodium and most of Haifa. Our next trip was to Acco (photos 119 - 129).

The Old Town is designed, understandably, as a maze. There are signs helpfully pointing you to various landmarks; if you follow them, you invariably end up in the bazaar. I am sure this is done on purpose. We finally succeded in finding the old Turkish Bath, now converted into the Municipal Museum (where they make you listen to one of the stupidest shows I've ever heard - and I've heard a few - otherwise they won't let you in), and then the Underground Crusaders' Fortress, which was our main goal. Honestly, if you want to see a Crusaders' fortress, go to Belvoir. The one in Acco is bigger but nowhere as beautiful. You walk through a series of bare underground rooms, and in each one the audio guide tells you the same thing: "This magnificent ... (fill in the blank: hall, refectory, entrance way, etc.)... was used by Crusaders. Then it was completely filled with earth, by such-and-such Sultan in preparation for such-and-such war, and later uncovered by the archaeologists."

According to Frommer, one of the knights' halls contains a patch of plaster in the ceiling, where fifty-something Irgun fighters escaped from the British prison-fortress directly overhead. The audio guide apparently didn't find this information sufficiently important to mention, and I didn't succeed in locating the patch on my own. Disappointed, I was ready to declare the tour a total waste of time, when suddenly we arrived at the next stop... a magnificent latrine!

Impressive, isn't it? Armed with this new insight into the day-to-day lives of Crusaders, we headed back to the ramparts for lunch. On the way, we passed through a Crusaders' tunnel (which was probably also filled with earth at some point, and not completely dug out, because in certain parts even Temma and I had to duck, not to mention Alex and David).

Finally, this is my favorite part of the trip to Acco - lunch with a view.

Israel, part 2: Jerusalem, City of David

I was going to post from Israel, but the vacation proved too hectic... The post about Zippori ended up the only one I managed to write there. When I returned, I was going to continue describing our vacation, in chronological order: Belvoir, Gamla, Tel Aviv - Yafo, then Jerusalem, and so on. Now I know, this is not going to happen either. So look at the photos.

They, at least, are in chronological order, so far:
- Zippori: 1 - 25
- Belvoir: 26 - 32
- Gamla: 37 - 53
- Neve Tzedek: 54 - 63
- Old Yafo: 64 - 74

And finally, photos 76 - 100: our tour of Ir David, the City of David, just to the south of the Old City of Jerusalem. We went there early in the morning: you walk along the Old City walls, just past the entrance towards the Western Wall, turn right - and go down, maybe a 100 yards. It is on a little hill by itself, but lower than the Temple Mount. This is supposedly one of the reasons this city survived unmolested in the ancient times: it was in a valley surrounded by higher hills - so enemies couldn't see it from far away - however, once they descended into the valley and saw the city, they had to get up on the hill from there, to conquer it. And the city had good defenses, very good: strong walls and such. The city belonged to the Jebusites, and that was precisely the reason King David decided to make it his capital: he wanted a city that was situated between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but did not belong to either tribe... politics, you know... So he gathered his army and approached the city walls, from below. And from the top of the walls, the Jebusites kept laughing and yelling: "David, you are not going to come here! The lame and the blind will stop you..." - and so on. And, just as it is described in 2 Samuel 5:8, King David told his troops: "Go and find the tzinnor, get through it to the city, and hit the Jebusites where it hurts, whether lame or blind or whatever" - because I guess he didn't like it when somebody laughed down at him, any more than any other king. So, what is the tzinnor?

It was a popular setup, at the time, to have a city up on a hill, and the water source - a spring - down below, outside the city walls. However, the city population had to have access to the water source in case of siege, so various ingenious systems were developed to protect the spring, cover it from the outside, and then dig a tunnel through the mountain to get to the water from inside the city. A good example of this can be seen in Megiddo, which we visited in 2007.

Jebusites supposedly has a similar system, with tzinnor being the tunnel, and David's plan of attack was - instead of storming the walls - to find the spring, climb up the tunnel, and get to the Jebusites through their soft underbelly, so to speak. Jebusites did not expect that: maybe they thought their spring was well hidden or well protected, or maybe they didn't realize that the narrow shaft, used for dropping down a bucket tied to a rope and pulling it back up, can also be used for climbing up by agile warriors, led by a man thinking "outside the box": the very same man who earlier thought of using a slingshot in a nontraditional way, also with great success...

This is an appealing story, and one that makes sense. What's more, I was shown the tzinnor (called Warren's Shaft, because it was discovered by a British officer, Charles Warren) when we went to Ir David in 2007. I took a photo of it then...

... just as I did now (photo 79).

Except now, according to out guide Arie, they do not think this is the tzinnor. New discoveries, shown in my photos 80 and 81, suggest that the Jebusites did not have to fill up their buckets by dropping them through a shaft, because they had built an elaborate walkable tunnel leading all the way to the spring. The spring itself was protected by a strong tower, with walls up to 4 meters thick and at least 8 meters tall.

Archeologists date the tower and the original tunnel at 1800 BCE, and say that only much later, about 800 BCE, the tunnel was made deeper for some reason, and Warren's Shaft (which appears to be a natural carst formation, not man-made) thus became connected to the water supply system. Case closed.

I have to confess: I was very disappointed. Here I had photos of the tzinnor, and it turned out not to be the tzinnor. What's more, where IS the tzinnor? Where had David's men climbed, on their way to defeat the enemy and claim the new capital for their genius king? When I asked Arie, he said something along the lines: "We don't know exactly what the word 'tzinnor' meant in Biblical times, it might have meant the whole water supply system. All we know is that these very stones date back 3800 years, they could have seen Abraham, they could have seen David." Now, I don't know about you, but I personally wasn't satisfied. And right then and there, I decided to continue believing that David's men climbed up Warren's Shaft - until such time when the archeologists give me a viable alternative. At that moment, my decision was based on pure stubbornness, with maybe a little gut feeling thrown in. But rereading the whole story now, I want to make a case: the fact that the water supply contained a pool, elaborate tunnel, and tower 3800 years ago would have been relevant if it was Abraham trying to storm the city. David was actually doing this 800 years later, that is, 3000 years ago. And we know that 2800 years ago the tunnel was made deeper "for some reason." So I can suggest a very good reason for making a tunnel deeper: maybe the water left? Maybe the spring shifted, and they had to dig deeper to get to the water? And maybe it started happening earlier, so by the time David was about to storm the city, the old water supply system was no longer used, and Jebusites actually DID get their water by dropping the buckets down a vertical shaft? For lack of a better theory, I am going to stick to that one for now.

The tzinnor (or the non-tzinnor) and the rest of the tunnels that might have witnessed David storming the city are now dry, because the waters from the Gihon spring were diverted into a newer and bigger tunnel built by King Hezekiah some 300 years later. The Assyrians were coming, and he had to secure the water supply. To save time, they were working from both ends towards each other, cutting through stone and obviously receiving directions to turn a bit to the left or to the right at several points, and somehow met in the middle. Modern scientists still haven't figured out how they managed that. When I first heard about this, I said irreverently that they were probably singing really loud, but after going through the tunnel and seeing for myself I was really impressed. Photo 87 shows where the two groups met - there is maybe 80 cm vertical difference in the ceiling (the floor, of course, had to be made level), and there were several abrupt turns in the tunnel both before and after the meeting place. The captions really tell it all, start at photo 82 and click forward, and you'll get a virtual tour.

Later photos show recent discoveries - portions of a huge staircase leading to the Temple Mount. Again, the captions have a lot of information, so I am not going to repeat it. Another large chunk of the excavations was supposed to be opened to the public on Yom HaAtzmaut (soon after our departure), so if you visit Ir David now you'll be able to see even more.