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July 24, 2003
Thursday, June 26, 2003
My mom had informed me Thursday morning that she had made reservations for Raquel, Sic, Dad, and I in Eilat which is a city in Israel right on the Red Sea, on the border of Egypt. I was so excited. (The last time I had visited Eilat was my senior year in high school and I was with my class.) My sister and Sic wanted to visit Eilat for a mini-honeymoon since they could not go to Greece, so the main reason we would be traveling was to give them a ride down. Mom had also made them separate reservations at a very nice hotel.)
The drive to Eilat was so much fun. Since Raquel gets carsick easily, she asked me to sit in the back with Sic, which was fine with me. It gave me a really good chance to get to know Sic better since our drive took about 4 1/2 hours. (We took the scenic route.) It was such a blast. About halfway through, he discovered my camera (Olympus OMG, totally manual) and wanted to know all about it. I showed him the basics and we took turns taking pictures that I was sure would never turn out! (Ha ha) Nevertheless, that time spent giving him tips and instruction on using the camera, was fun. He was like a sponge: He wanted to know everything I could possibly tell him about photography. Not that I know everything, but I loved helping him learn.
The drive was amazing. We drove through the desert, which is so beautiful words could never do it justice. There are rolling, pink hills with tiny Bedouin goat trails that encircle each hill. I wanted to stop and take pictures of the Bedouin families, in black and white, but we were in a rush to get to our hotels. (A sort of rush.) Eilat sits low nestled between the mountains and the sea, so the road that takes you into the city tops a rise from which you can see the whole city, the Red Sea, and the mountains behind it. Since the sun was setting at the very time that we topped this hill, the view was breathtaking but there was nowhere to stop to take pictures. Sic was VERY upset by this and gave my dad grief the whole rest of the way.
We found their hotel first, paid for their room, and unloaded the luggage. After they were settled, my dad and I went in search of our hotel. We actually decided on one closer to the boardwalk so that we wouldn't have to drive everywhere. We got settled in the room and set out to meet Raquel and Sic on the boardwalk. It was already dark by this time and the city was lit up and very much alive. (Since it is SO hot during the day, such as 120 by noon, the city sleeps most of the day and comes alive after the sun sets. It's very cool.) Raquel had already called us on our Cell phone twice by the time we arrived on the boardwalk. They wanted to have dinner with us as a family at a restaurant called the Boston. It was right on the water and really beautiful. Sic had a HUGE steak, dad, Raquel, and I all had fish. The food was great. Amazingly, the bathroom in this place was amazing; It was down a small hallway in which the floor was see-through glass colored blue like the sea, with "fake" fish, sharks, etc., just under where your feet would step. A little girl, probably about 5, was being taken to the bathroom by her brother. All of a sudden, I hear this ear splitting scream. I looked over and see this girl kicking and screaming, absolutely refusing to go into the bathrooms. I remembered the shark under the floor and realized that she was probably too scared to go in there. Poor thing. It WAS kind of creepy.
After dinner, we wandered the boardwalk. Sic and I had spotted some carnival rides and wanted to go on the "Kamikaze" which was a ride that swings back and forth until finally you are hanging upside down. It does this several times until you are going around in circles. Of course, you are locked down tight in a cage, but it was still pretty scary. Since my dad and sister don't like carnival rides, Sic and I rode together. It was quite fun and we told them how they missed out BIG TIME!! Ha ha....
Around 11:30pm, we all decided that we wanted to go swimming in the sea since our hotel pools were closed. We made our way back to the hotels to change and met back on the beach. The water temperature was cool but the night air was still just hot as hot could be making the water feel wonderful. Raquel and I spotted a raised area out in the water that looked like a detached pier. We decided to race to it since it wasn't that far away. (It felt so good to be swimming!) I heard an enormous splash behind me and realized that Sic had jumped in to race US. He beat us to this object, but I quickly realized, after he had started climbing up onto it, that it was covered in barnacles and probably the poisonous sea urchins I had told them about. It wasn't long before we realized that Sic was hurt. From where we were, we could see that his foot was bleeding and he said it was very sore, more than anything else. We all swam back to shore and realized that he was having trouble walking on it. Fortunately, their hotel was close to the beach that we had been swimming at. We slowly made our way back to their hotel and asked for a medic. When Sic was examined, the medic stated that he was pretty sure Sic had scraped his foot along a sea urchin and that he should probably be evaluated at the ER. There was a problem with this idea, though. Sic is a soldier and they have to be treated at military bases, which was about 3 hours away from where we were. It was already nearly 1am. Raquel and Sic decided they would just soak his foot, try to get the pieces of the urchin out, and deal with it on Monday when he went back to base. Poor guy! Dad and I made sure that Sic and Raquel were ok to be left alone before we headed back to our hotel, exhausted.
Stay tuned!!
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