Kings City

Welcome back! Today we will visit Kings City, the place worth to visit!

Kings City is a complex where both children and adults will find something interesting. The building from outside reminds a big castle. Inside it you will find a 4D cinema (with animated movie telling about the times of Ancient Egypt) the Bible cave, cave of illusions (which includes magic room and scary room) and King Solomon's waterfall.

When you enter the Bible cave, the place really reminds the cave, deemed lights are showing you the pass and in the walls, behind the glass, when you press the green button ENGLISH, the voice starts telling the story from the Bible's Old Testament related to the scene you see. The small figures of people in the clothes of that times and animals, accompanied by the sounds of lightning, rain, birds so that the visitor would feel the drama of the scene. Moreover, in the aquariums on the other sides of the cave, one can take a close look at the rodents who live under the ground.

Another interesting place is the amusement mini-park, with very interesting puzzles and staff to think about and try. One of the examples is the Magnetic room. As soon as you enter the room you can feel as if something is pulling you aside, even though you are trying to walk straight. Or the big spiral construction representing the phone, which actually works, if two people stand from two sides of the construction and one of them starts speaking on it, the other can hear and reply.

One more interesting place is the mirror room, which is surrounded by the mirrors, and you should be able to find the right turn to get to the exit. This part is full of fun, since in each turn you can bump into a mirror, but don't be scary, it won't break =)

The scary room is also very interesting, starting with the spinning bridge, one should walk it in the darkness while the road is lightened by the stars, and as usual, there are some scary figures here and there after you cross the bridge, otherwise it would not be called the scary room.

However, the most interesting part of Kings City is the valley of Solomon's life story. Since it is the last stop before exit, make sure you visit all the rest before entering it and get ready to get wet, since the journey goes through the water. So, how it goes - you take the boat, which is automated and the only thing you have to do - listen and watch. The boat slowly passes through parts separated with the gates. Each part shows the scenes from the life of King Solomon and his people. All the figures of the people and decorations seem real, and the sizes of people, decorations and constructions fascinate, giving you the feeling of you being small.

As soon as you get outside the last part, make sure to put all the cameras to your bags, hold the handles and get ready to roll down. Don't forget to smile, since there is the camera that takes the photo of you, which you can receive in the form of the souvenir on the exit. The best time to visit Kings City is morning, since you would be able to try the roller-coaster while the sun is still on the sky thus the photo would be of better quality, trust me =) 

Unfortunately, there is an age and height limit in order to prevent small kinds getting afraid of the height.

Well, this was all about the Kings City, I hope one day, my dear reader, you will visit it yourself in order to see and feel it yourself, since it is very difficult to share all the feelings and emotions.

Sincerely,
Makhina 

Underwater Observatory

Welcome back, my dear friends! 

Today I will take you to the most popular place to visit in Eilat - the Underwater Observatory!

"If you haven't been to the Underwater Observatory Marine Park, you haven't been to Eilat" (Coral World)

Before visiting the underwater observatory, you should visit almost 10 other interesting sections on the territory of the park, such as sharks pool, turtles pool, aquarium with corals and different species of fish not only from the Red Sea, but from all over the world.
The most fascinating is the sharks pool (you can watch them both from side and from top). There are fixed hours when you can watch the personnel feeding them, which is very exciting.

 Next stop - the aquarium of corals that were brought to the park from the deepest parts of the Red Sea. The beauty of most of them can be observed only under the special light; for example, on the picture you can see that one of them needs a darkness to glow. Next to all the small widows there are signs with the description, so if anyone will be interested to read, you are more than welcomed. Some of the corals are located together with the species that they live with in underwater. The most curios is to find Chameleon-fish among the corals.

The facilities of the park also included the big pool of jellyfish. I did not know they can be so beautiful, I have seen them before in the sea, during the jellyfish season (which is June-July in Israel), and at that time they seemed to be the most unpleasant creatures. However, watching them behind the aquarium glass   in the darkness and under the special light of the water was the most memorable part of the journey. These creatures appear to be so gentle and fragile, that one even cannot imagine how harmful they can be to a human.  

The final destination - observatory. The observatory is a tower located in the middle of the sea, without any fences or cages, offering a rare view of the Red Sea, with its bright colors, tones, and the marine life in the Gulf of Eilat. 

The tower consists of two display halls. These halls are submerged at a depth of 12 meters under the sea, offering visitors a natural view of the coral reef's spectacular beauty through huge plate glass windows. (Coral World)

The visitors of the park have an incredible opportunity to watch the process of mining pearls. And this is for real, right in front of you the lady (who speaks both Russian and English) takes the closed shell from the small pool, explaining the process of how the pearls form and gently opens the it, and here we go - the real pearl that you can buy, if you wish. The pearls can be both white, black, light-pink, or off-white. The size of the pearl depends on its age. The one on the picture is six years old. 

This was all about the observatory, next stop - Kings City, the place worth to visit! 

Sincerely, 

Makhina

Eilat, Part II

So, one of the hotels you can consider to stop in Eilat is Club Hotel.

The building has a shape of a big passenger liner. The interior design of the hotel is arranged so that the visitors would feel themselves as if they are on a real liner. Rooms, halls, lobbies and backyard are decorated using aqua theme. 

This is what you see in the main lobby upon the entrance - very symbolic representation of the main concept. By the way, this part is the only place where you have access to the Wi-Fi. There is no Wi-Fi connection in the rooms, unfortunately. In order to have an access, one should buy the special coupon with the password on it after the check-in process.

As you enter the hotel, turn to the right and walk straight till the end of the hall. On the way you will pass by the Espresso Lounge, the reception desk would be on your right.

Right in front of the reception desk is the monument of the lower part of whale's body, and the upper part is outside, at the backyard, on the way to the pool.

The rooms were pretty small, I would say. But since we were in Eilat for one day this time (our main destination was Petra, as you might remember), it was more or less convenient. The most important is that the hotel was 15 min drive to the Israel-Jordan border.

Intermission.

Eilat, part I

Hello, my dear reader!

Continuing our trip. The next stop, that I would like us to visit, is Eilat - one of the tourist cities of Israel. I have been to Eilat twice with my family, and both times were incredible!

Starting with the short introduction - Eilat is located on the Gulf of Aqaba (close to Jordan). Moreover, it is on the northern tip of the Red Sea (I don't like Red Sea, it has an unpleasant odor, unfortunately).

Eilat is a Russian speaking city; most of the tourists that visit Eilat during the year are Russians. The place is very warm (even during the winter season), it has its own airport inside the city, which is very convenient, because otherwise one would have to get to Eilat through Tel-Aviv Ben-Gurion airport. The road from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem takes around an hour, and from Jerusalem to Eilat around 4 hours (I know it because we have been travelling from Jerusalem). While driving to Eilat, the first stop one can do is in McDonald's.

Even though there are other cafes at the same spot, they are all named in Hebrew, so non-Hebrew speaker would not be able to understand them. But don't pass by - in the supermarket they make a very nice coffee (that's what my parents said). By the way, on the Israeli territory there is only kosher food, so if you would like a pizza with pepperoni, don't even hope to get one. You would not find one, unless you buy a frozen semi-cooked pizza and add pepperoni yourself (since Israelis serve mostly a kosher food, one should forget about mixing meat with sour cream).

So, our trip was continuing for an hour already. We've listened for almost half of the songs already, and got tired. It was the beginning of January and the weather was cool, even though it was sunny. Last time we traveled to Eilat, it was the beginning of May, right after I got break from my studies, and we were only four people - my parents, my youngest brother and me, and there was a lot of space in the car. In January, it was the whole family and it wasn't that comfortable, but believe me, as soon as you fall asleep you forget about the space (just make sure to dress up comfortably).

You understand that you are close to Eilat as soon as El-Gaucho place would be on your right. Amazing place in terms of atmosphere and food. The menu is full of different types of meat. We usually order the mix. It is very convenient, since you can try everything they offer and next time order something special for yourself. The personnel was very kind and helpful, they explained how the special dish was cooked, suggested the wine and, overall, made us feel welcomed. The place has parking lot right in front the entrance, so there would be no problem with parking (and the parking is free).

What is interesting about Eilat is that on the roundabouts they have different iron statues, one of them was representing the classic band made up of 5 musicians with different musical instruments. Here is the picture from May trip - me and my brother dancing in the center =)

Another interesting composition is closer to the center of the city, which represents the main attraction place - underwater observatory.

There are mainly three interesting places worth to visit in Eilat: the observatory, dolphin's reef and King's city palace. In addition, there is also an MAX cinema place, but unfortunately with fixed movie programs about the sea, sea inhabitants and the overall life of the sea. The size of the canvas fascinates, and there are a lot of fun places where you can take a photo, for example, the president's office.

There are two malls as well, one of which has the ice arena inside, three levels of shops and different cafes. While enjoying your cup of coffee, you can watch the performance, there are 5 ladies and 1 gentlemen presenting their program one by one.

There is also a small museum, but it is boring, it shows the history of Eilat from the days when Israelis concurred the territory. Boooooring, being the person passionate about the history, I was falling asleep. =( However, the outside territory of the museum is pretty fun, with all those big statues of colored fish - like a modern art or something related. Azi, my brother, was enjoying his time =)

To be continued...

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Continuing through Petra

Moving further, towards the center of the city one should walk through the quite narrow pass which is fascinating, walking through the rose-color stones, which were actually getting cooler. Since the day was moving slowly towards its end at this point it was getting even colder than before.

If you are wondering why the rock has weird shape, look at the next picture - this is the way the water was getting to the city - the water-supply system of those days, which actually did not change dramatically nowadays. The humankind just found the easier way to provide water by producing the special forms in the factory.

Alright, now we are almost there. The center of the city is getting closer, and it took us almost 20 minutes (taking into consideration that we were walking without our parents), even though we were walking fast. We had only 1 hour for the round-trip (from/to the Treasure Al Khazneh - the one I was writing about in the previous post)

Ta-da, here are the Royal Tombs, it is getting a bit spooky knowing that almost the half of the city were the tombs of royal people.

My oldest brother, Umed was suggesting to go there and check for some ghosts, but since I am a afraid of supernatural things we just laughed and moved further towards the point we promised our youngest brother Azamat to visit (he asked us to promise him, in the car, when we were only on the way to Petra, that without any clarifications we would climb with him to one point, telling us that it was "Piece of Cake".  He had been to Petra with our parents at the beginning of May, but at that time my mom did not let him climb there. And guess what... We promised him!).

 Another side of wall and tombs again. They are everywhere. But ha-ha, the camels ^_^ I couldn't have a chance to ride on them, basically because they were badly smelling, and as you know, I love my clothes too much =) Another reason was that last time when my parents were in Petra and they rent the camels, my mom got the crazy one that was all the time hitting itself on the rocks with my mom on its back.

As usual for any tourist visiting new places, the bazaars with handmade stuff are available, and as usual, the prices are three times higher than in any other city-shops. But still, they had seemed inspiring and people bought them =)

And here is the point that was called the "Piece of Cake", but it is only the beginning of it. We climbed another 10 min, basically calling for Azamat, since as you can see, he was always couple of meters ahead =(

Since I was the slowest one, Umed left me behind to be able to take the pictures and he left for Azi. 

Looking from the top down is fascinating =) It wasn't that high, one may say, but don't forget, I am afraid of high points. =(

Oh! Here is the most interesting - we were another 10 minutes away from the point Azi wanted to reach, when I started bagging him to stop. And we did, but under one condition - I would take a picture from the edge of the cliff o_O

Here is me - walking ahead to face my worst fear that my brothers pushed me to. AAAAAAAAAA! We made the deal - both of them held me and I took a photo ^_^ I did it! =) even though with closed eyes...hehehe ^_^

We managed to get only to the ancient theater when the time we were given passed and we had to go back to the Treasury to start our move with parents to the exit, where Rezik was supposed to be waiting to get us to the border.

I was taking random pictures walking very quickly, and only after I uploaded them on my computer I noticed the steps... do you see them?! the short one =) the question where they came from hit my mind, but I couldn't find any other explanation rather than it was destroyed or maybe reshaped by the water. Probably...

Another piece of stairs and again no signs where it is supposed or was supposed to get you to...

This is, by the way, what was next to the stairs, some kind of monument engraved on the rock, which you will never be able to guess what did it represent, until you read the description, which is located a bit further - Camel Caravan Reliefs - a monumental relief representing the movement of camel caravans entering Petra.

Closer to the exit (and actually it is the same way you get to the city, but I did not notice it since we were rushing on our horses towards the center) - Royal Tombs...again...when in one of the books, the name of which I didn't even remember I was told that Petra is a Dead City, I didn't believe it, until I visited and started counting the tombs myself...

This was the end of the travel...Bye-bye Petra...It was amazing day, that I will remember forever =) I really wish all my readers to visit it one day and see the beauty of Jordan themselves! And by the way, if you will travel through Aqaba, ask for Rezik, every taxi driver in Aqaba knows Rezik, he is the best guide around Petra, Wadi-Rum desert (which we did not have time to visit), tell him that you found out about him from the Tajik family, he know us, we were the only one in his taxi-driver/guide experience =) and don't forget to write something positive in his special book of memories =) 

Sincerely yours,
Makhina!

Our first stop - Kingdom of Jordan

Welcome to Petra, my friends!

 I thought it would be a good start in my travelling diary. So let's the magic begin!!!

It took us 2 hour-drive from Wadi Araba Crossing (international border between Eilat, Israel and Aqaba, Jordan) to reach this amazing place – Petra, the place where Sam Witwicky discovered the Matrix (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), as my youngest brother says, ^_^ or a place, where Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail in the movie Indiana Jones and the last Crusade (by the way, pretty interesting, even though unrealistic, movie)

[The image acquired via http://maps.google.com/ directions Aqaba, Jordan and Petra, Jordan]

So, this is how we ended up in Petra. Early in the morning, we crossed the border between Israel and Jordan in Eilat (there are 2 places through which you can get to Jordan). The boarder area was not equipped with all the fancy hi-tech stuff that we see in other countries. It (boarder) was full of tourists, especially Russians, because they buy 1-2 days tour to Jordan in a package with visits to Israel. So, in order not to wait in the longest lines I’ve ever seen, one should get to the border as early as possible, but the border opens either at 8 or 9. Why don’t I remember?! Because we were a bit late, mostly because of me, I decided that I want tight curls on that day, instead of waves or braid =)

When we got to the border, there were more than 80 people already, and only 3 counters working, and the ladies were working extremely slow (and this was only on the Israeli side), in comparison to the same 3 counters on the other side, where it took us around 20 min to pass the passport control.

By the way, here is how my Jordan visa looks like, more like a stamp, than the usual visa that all of us used to see ^_^

After all, even though we were at the border around 9 am, we arrived to Jordan around 12 p.m., where we took the taxi to the center of Aqaba. Since it was Friday, most of the places were closed, due to the Friday praying, so we could not rent a car and were forced to get a taxi to Petra. And honestly speaking, it was better solution, since the taxi driver, Rezik, was 1) funny; 2) friendly; 3) showed us the panorama places on the way; 4) charged the camera battery; 5) got us on his way back the canon camera charger, since we could not find it in Israel. 

Going further, since we visited Jordan in January, it was pretty cold. Honestly speaking, I did not expect it, I was hoping to walk around without the winter coat, but instead, I had to put on my warm scarf (I love-love-love the color of the scarf, and the handmade flowers on it make it look so cute and girly ^_^). I was unlucky to step to historical place in boots, and not sneakers, believe me, you would not want to repeat my “experiment”, unless you have the new pairs that are 0.5 points smaller than your actual size, in this case, after the walk they will become the most comfortable one =)

When you buy the tickets and go inside, don't believe the guys that insist getting the horse or carriage saying that it is free of charge, that the price is included to the price of the ticket, and so on. This is not true at all...we asked for 2 horses and 1 carriage and my father paid additional fee which was almost equal to the price of the ticket, which is not fair, especially since it is only one way trip. Moreover, the horse riders are so insolent, even if you start bargaining to lower the price, they start begging to leave them tips since you have paid only for the horse, and at the end you will end up with paying double just to get rid of them. Most of the people say that in the Middle East one should bargain the same way as in Asia, but believe me, people in Asia are not that clingy as the one we met in Petra. Of course, there is the positive side - you don't have to walk all the way long, and save energy for the returning =)  

Petra is amazing...not only because it is a historical place, but because it is fascinating how back in 1550 BCE people managed to cut the city out of the stone. Actually it is not the stone, it is more of a mountain, probably. Petra is amazing on sunset (and I believe on sunrise as well), when all the shades of red mixed together glow and..and...the words just fail me. In general, I can say that Petra looks rosy, if you are not taking a closer look, that is why, probably, historically it is known as a Rose City (due to the color of the stone).

Take a look at the most known building in the city (even though the most famous is the monastery that we didn't manage to walk to, it was too far):

The top:  

Someone without the head and almost without the horse =) 

This was exactly the place where the Matrix and the Holy Grail was found, but unfortunately, we couldn't get inside. The closest look that I was able to take is here: 

This is only the beginning of the journey =) Fasten your seat belts, Ladies and Gentlemen and enjoy your travelling :)

Yours,
Makhina  

Jordan Tourism Board