I had a great night of sleep and an early walk around the tel. I watched the sunrise over the mountains. Tuttle was in fact chasing the two girls on their morning jog, but as I write he is showing off doing push-up. (Usually you write “push-ups” but in this case the singular is appropriate.)
Today we drove about two hours south to the city of Eilat, a tourist city on the Red Sea. The highlight of the drive is a stop at the “Cow Palace,” a roadside market and gift shop with an inordinate number of cow-oriented decorations. It was udderly amoozing. It is still a good place for a rest stop and coffee, so much so that people wanted to stop there on the way back for ice cream (and a number of other edible items!) The store has chocolate covered manna, which I am sure is totally biblical.
We split the group for the day. Most of the group went snorkeling at Coral Beach, a national park. I did not join them, but everyone had a great time and the coral was very good (especially given the low price). Lunch was excellent there, I am told, although one member of our group tried to order pepperoni on his cheese pizza. That was so non-kosher.
I stayed with rest of the group who went to the public beach swim area. This was a nice spot to lounge by the Red Sea, although five of the group rented a boat and Captain Ray Crumb took them out for a three-hour tour (OK, it wasn’t that long, and the weather never did start to get rough.) I walked along the promenade for about a half hour. There are a huge variety of stores and resturants, everything from trinkets to some trendy fashionable stores I really do not know much about. I had a great pastery and cappicino at Cafe Cafe. Honestly, I had two, but they were small. Ish.
After dinner (spaghetti and meatballs, and an excelent poppy seed cake), we visited Kate’s gallery. Unfortunately she was “out of stock” on her jewelry but she had plenty of her excellent prints of Tamar and other sites from Israel. I highly recommend her art (I’ll post a link to her site when I get back home.) Quite a few of us are sitting around the fire in the Sukkah (which I called the Bedouin Boutique).
Rick Skelley Floats in the Red Sea