Andrew and I are currently in the Old City in Jerusalem. The last two days have been pretty eventful. We rose early yesterday for our last half day in Istanbul. Before our flight we managed to fit in a Turkish bath which was a bit of an experience.

The bath starts by changing into a towel and entering the bath room, which is a large, all marble room with a big flat solid marble table in the middle. You lie on the table, and although it's not super hot we broke into a good sweat pretty quickly. After about 15 minutes of laying about our masseurs entered: big, hairy, mustachioed Turkish gentlemen. The had us lie on the stone and massaged us, which mainly meant roughly kneading and slapping us. My guy spoke no english, but every minute or so would give me a good slap and say 'Y-y-y-e-e-e-s-s-s-s', like a semi-orgasmic Count Dracula. After the massage then took us over to a wash basin, poured water over our heads and scrubbed and soaped us up. All told our bathers were only with us for 10, maybe 15 minutes. Seems a bit steep for 30 euros.

After lazing about the bath house some more and getting changed we still had a lot of time before our flight. I needed a hair cut, so I decided I'd risk it at the bath house. The barber was quick and proficient, but something strange happened at the end of the hair cut. He took out what looked like a big q-tip, dipped it in some waxy substance and lit it on fire. He shook it a few times I think to make sure none of the fuel was going to fly off, then beat this flaming stick against my ears and along the top of my cheek bone. This procedure was intended to remove unwanted ear and cheek hair. The flame was about 3 inches high, it was no small fire. The risk of getting a flaming stick in the eye not withstanding, it was a cool experience, though I'm not sure I'd do it again. It looked so good Andrew did it too.

After the bath we flew to Israel and headed straight for the Old City in Jerusalem. First impressions of Israel are that it's a strange place. On one hand it's very old and beautiful and conflicted. On the other hand it's a bit like Florida, with old cranky jewish people and young douche bags. Something I find quite weird are the young people with the guns. I expected to see lots of military and guns, and lots of young people with guns, but there are a lot of young people who in every other way look and act like normal teens (shorts, flip-flops, eating ice cream, hanging out with their friends) but are carrying automatic weapons.

Today we rented a car and drove into the West Bank and down the coast of the Red Sea. We went for a little hike in an Oasis type national park, went to Masada which was slight more interesting for me because I'd studied it in latin in high school, and then went to a beach on the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea was pretty good. It's a dumb then to say, but you really float. It's probably equivalent to sitting on two water noodles, or wearing a life jacket. One rubs the clay under the sand on your skin. It really remarkable how smooth my skin was after applying mud on it for 5 minutes. All in all I'd give the dead sea a solid 8 out of 10.

Day two in Istanbul. Yesterday we saw the Aya Sophia, took a walk to the other side of the river in search of football tickets, got some Turkish coffee, and so forth. Today we did the Blue Mosque (it was closed yesterday), hit up the grand bazaar (thought about buying a rug, but didn't) and tonight we're going to a football match (go Beþiktaþ!)

Istanbul is quite nice, more modern/western than I expected. There was a small east meets west incident but I promised Andrew I wouldn't talk about that on the blog.

The food here is a little more boring that I'd hoped. We went out for a nice, or at least, expensive meal last night. It was ok, nice appetizers, but the main courses are a bit dull. There are a million donair shops, some of which aren't too bad.

Feels like I should have more to say on the old blog, but so far things have been pretty good, but no big excitment. Maybe Israel will go to war with Syria or Iran when we're there and I'll have more to talk about.