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Inspiring Beautiful Travels

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From Roots to Soup: A Night with Chef Moshe Basson

April 14, 2016 by Kristin Winet Leave a Comment

DSC_4259For those who know Moshe Basson, they’ve probably heard how his story begins. They might know, for instance, that the man now called “Israel’s Biblical Chef” arrived in Jerusalem as a nine-month-old Iraqi refugee and that his first memories of Israeli are of living huddled in a tiny aluminum shed with his family in the outskirts of Jerusalem. They might know that he planted a very sacred eucalyptus tree in his front yard when he was only six years old, and that, 25 years later, after growing up in his father’s bakery, his mother’s kitchen, and the fragrant Jerusalem hillsides, he would christen his first restaurant and call it Eucalyptus.

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These key facts about one of the most innovative, praised, and renowned chefs in Jerusalem are well-known and documented.

But what those who know Moshe Basson might not know is that he credits his unique cooking method, one grounded in ancient cooking techniques and centering dishes around what is known to some as simply “the accoutrements,” to the women in his young life—and, perhaps even more surprisingly—to a couple of humdrum weeds and roots.

Moshe Basson is not a shy man, either: ask him about his weed-foraging days in the glowing Jerusalem afternoons and he will regale you for hours (he did with us!). When he talks about the ingredients he’s rescued from nearly being forgotten, he seems to glow–it’s clearly his most favorite thing in the entire world.

His menu is full of wild-growing herbs, “sidewalk weeds,” and herbaceous plants and shrubs with names I’ve never heard of, like malva and purslane and hyssop.

Malva
Malva
Purslane
Purslane
hyssop
Hyssop

If you ask him, Basson will gladly pull up a chair at his elegant al fresco restaurant in the Artist’s Colony near Old Jerusalem—which, though it’s gone through many iterations and locations over the years, still faithfully sticks to the name Eucalyptus—and will tell you all about the Arabic, Iraqi, and Syrian women in his neighborhood who taught him about the beauty of the earth’s overlooked horticulture. As a little boy, he followed these women, fellow refugees from war-torn countries themselves, around the hillsides and abandoned gardens between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and he helped them forage, sort, and cook with the new foods of his new land.

Because his family was nearly penniless when they arrived in Israel, they experimented—a lot—with the foods they could find in the wild. In the kitchen, Basson watched his Iraqi mother play with foods completely out of her cultural repertoire, foods like the herbaceous plants he was bringing home and homemade olive oil, neither of which were popular at all in the Iraqi kitchen. His mother, he says, only knew of hyssop as being a medicine and preferred oils made from sesame seeds. While his dad faithfully whipped up the same menu of Middle Eastern pastries and cakes at the bakery each morning, every meal at home was an experiment.

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Though he is often called Israel’s Biblical Chef for his devotion to using local ingredients and excavating old cooking techniques and recipes, Basson will confess that it was never his intention to be connected with Biblical cooking. “So I was just cooking the food of my mom and her mom and others from the region,” he says, gesturing widely at the tables and tables of patrons around him, and, though he has always known that “a big part of the food [at Eucalyptus] is poor people’s food,” he didn’t know that he and his mother were making nearly identical recipes to what was described in the Bible and other ancient texts until years after he opened his first restaurant.

Basson knows, though, that there are certain and unavoidable difficulties with popularizing food that has complicated histories, foods such as the Jerusalem artichoke, a root vegetable (with no relation to the green globe-like artichoke that shares its name) that he uses to make one of his celebrated soups. He tells the story of a time when a French family came to dine and he horrified the grandma at the table when he told them their next course would be a soup made of something many Westerners call a sunchoke. “She shouted and said, ‘No!’ and everybody—I mean, this is a small restaurant under a tree—looked up and she said, ‘No! This was the food in the war. I cannot eat it.’ So everybody was saying OK, they don’t want it, they don’t want it. She said “No, no, no, no, you eat it. It’s wonderful. I cannot.” Then, he laughs. “And then she ate it.” He did not know, he confesses, that Jerusalem artichoke soup—the topinambour in French—was many peoples’ daily rationed food when the Nazis occupied France in World War I. Now, he tells all his French patrons what they’ve eaten only after they’ve eaten it.

Dinner at Eucalyptus is a many-course event, prominently placing roots, stems, spices, and homegrown leafy greens like purslane, chubeza, olesh, and malva at the center of the table. The night begins with freshly-baked focaccia bread and five delectable spreads: aioli, pesto with hyssop, red pepper, sumac-dusted tahini, and garlic mayonnaise.

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From there, a soup trio, complete with the infamous Jerusalem artichoke soup as well as lentil and tomato-mint, comes out, and after that, his elegant signature dishes: gnocchi with fresh chubeza, a wild herb slightly reminiscent of spinach, mixed into the potato dough; figs stuffed with roasted chicken and drizzled in in a sweet tamarind sauce; maqluba, the upside-down casserole of rice, chicken, and vegetables, seasoned with fresh saffron and topped with yogurt; fire-roasted eggplant served with tehina and pomegranate seeds; grilled duck breast with mashed potatoes, carrot coulis and berry relish; and thinly-sliced steak served with a mix of ancient greens from his garden.

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Dessert is no less extraordinary and no less attentive, with dishes like semolina cake served with wine-soaked pears and jelly or pate-stuffed macaroons drizzled with sweet raspberry sauce.

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Though Eucalyptus has been in its current home—a collection of wooden tables, hanging pots, and old-fashioned lamps on the terraced steps of Hutzot Hayotzer, just west of the Old City—for six years now, Basson hasn’t forgotten his long journey to find home. In 1962, he planted a tree he hoped would bear fruit to feed his family. Twenty-five years later, in 1987, he opened the first Eucalyptus restaurant near the eponymous plant he raised as a child. Today, after three additional moves, the walls around which his restaurant now sits, made from the same stone as his home in Iraq, nurture his business, his family, and his future.

A future, he tells me, as we clean up after making maqluba together, that includes his young grandchildren, his family of chickens, and a garden made of beloved, complicated vegetables.

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Yours in travel and good eats,

Kristin

Most gracious thanks to Weill and the Israel Ministry of Tourism for hosting our stay in Israel and for introducing me to some of the world’s most incredible places. If you’re interested in visiting Israel, they are a fantastic resource!

 

Filed Under: Chef Interviews, Food, Israel, Travel Writing Tagged With: chef profiles, cooking, culture, encounters, food, good eats, history, Israel, Jerusalem, Middle East, travel

A Year in Review: The 9 Most Beautiful Places My Feet Went in 2015

December 30, 2015 by Kristin Winet 1 Comment

DSC_4874It’s been a weird year, to say the least. My family has this ongoing mantra that 2016 better be our year of calm, as 2015 was unusually unlucky in some ways and unusually wonderful in others. We had the usual suspects so typical of difficulties in a family life: my mom’s unexpected bronchitis that landed her in the hospital for a week and resulted in her missing my graduation…and then her persistent cancer coming back for the fourth time in eight years just a month after we returned from Russia. My husband Ryan’s uncle’s unexpected death. My sister’s toxic job environment that nearly and almost literally unraveled her. My 92-year-old grandma’s quickening dementia. Car accidents, hospital visits, decisions that became missteps. Things like that. We’ve survived them all, but I have to say, health and wellness can be damn tiring.

We had beautiful moments, too, of course. For one thing, I just returned from 10 days in Atlanta for the holidays, where my family and I crammed our week full of get-togethers, long walks, good restaurants, day trips, and late-night conversations–all the accoutrements connected with quality family moments. I reconnected with the stark beauty of the Appalachian forests. I breathed in the crisp, cool air in the early mornings and looked for abandoned birds’ nests in the trees that had lost their leaves. These are beautiful moments.

The year also marked a lot of changes for me. For one thing, my life went into upheaval in May when I finally finished the dissertation on feminist approaches to digital travel writing that I’d been writing for the past two years. Though it was one of the proudest moments of my life–nearly 300 pages of well-researched, painstakingly revised discourse on my favorite topic–it also meant that a huge stage, a transformative, difficult, and beautiful stage, of my life was over. That stage where, although I was poor as dirt and living off $15,000 a year as a graduate student, I finally had to face the hard reality that the degree I’d been working on for five years didn’t have a resulting job for me in our sweet desert home in Tucson. That if I wanted to put my degree into practice, it meant moving away. It meant that Ryan would have to leave his student job as a writer for the President’s Office and bring his dissertation along with him, wherever we went. It meant I’d take a job that would hopefully lead to professional fulfillment and spiritual growth and that would also still afford me the time to travel and to pepper my year with the occasional press trip or international voyage. It meant facing the reality that I had to do things like sign up for health insurance and a retirement plan for the first time in my adult life.

As I sit here today, in front of my computer screen, just three blocks from the beach (something I thought would bring me a permanent sense of happiness but which, in fact, has been a mere backdrop to the difficulties we’ve had here so far), I can’t help but feel a little bit cynical. I miss our desert home more than I ever thought I possibly could: the striking sunsets, the walks Ryan and I would take around our neighborhood as we learned to identify the strange plants of the Sonoran Desert, the mountainous hikes we took so often and their surprising streams and unusual flowering cacti, the community of writers I’d come to see as family (and still do!), the dear friends we had to leave behind, the students who worked diligently with our nonprofit community partners and the difference I felt I was making by bridging writing and advocacy work. By August, when we’d packed up our house on the dreams of a good life in California, I still felt unsure that moving was what I wanted. Today, on December 29th, five months after we left, I still feel that way.

But that’s for another story for another time.

New writing topics, too, entered into my life: I wrote about Rasputin’s man parts, which are supposedly preserved in an itty-bitty erotica museum in the middle of downtown St. Petersburg (verdict’s still out on whether or not it’s a horse organ or the poor man’s 11-inch member, but still.) The piece was picked up by Jezebel Magazine, which still strikes me as unbelievable but amazingly awesome. I also wrote about a museum of still-functional Soviet-Era arcade games and the whole thing went viral–I learned what it meant to have a piece of writing truly go public, and I had more emails and comments from readers than I could have ever imagined. I covered the story of a child behavioral therapist-turned-chef in a tiny hummus kiosk in Tel Aviv, and I wrote about impromptu New Orleans street music. I wrote about my usual suspects, too–odd and quirky objects, feminist approaches to travel writing, and I took a lot of pictures. In fact, at last count, I’ve taken over 10,000 this year alone (I know, I know, where am I going to put all those photos?!). I started doing more on social media, reaching out and commenting on other people’s work, and I went from 0 followers on Instagram at the beginning of the year to 3,000. My column in En Voyage magazine all the way over in Taiwan is still going strong, and I’m moving away from more advice-heavy pieces and branching out into more narrative memoir-driven pieces. I’m still writing creatively in those few spare moments.

And, I just had a birthday, one that seems particularly odd because it doesn’t really mean anything except that I definitely can’t claim I’m still in my 20s and I can’t claim that I just turned 30. What happens, really, when someone turns 32? Or 33? Or onward from there? I don’t know what life has in store for me (I mean, who does?!), but I know that I’m going to be facing some big decisions in the next year or two as I grace through the early part of this new decade: where (and if I want) to set roots, whether or not to have a family, how to finish my book, where to place my professional energies, my time, and my emotions, how to keep myself in balance mentally, spiritually, and physically, how to fit travel into my life in a way that doesn’t zap me of my passion but that keeps the little wanderlust who sits on my shoulder, like a tiny angel and devil wrapped into one, happy and playful.

Though those questions are certainly for another time, here’s a metaphorical celebratory toast to the incredible people and places I met in nine very awesome places in 2015. In and amongst everything, I still found time to set my feet aloft, and here are just a few of the places they landed.

Victoria, B.C., Canada

Victoria Canada 1

My first trip of the year this year was to Vancouver, Canada, and let me tell you: What a gorgeous place to be in the wintertime. I had the wonderful pleasure of working with Tourism Victoria while I was there, and they kept me–and my writing fingers–very busy! I hopped a sea plane at dawn from Vancouver to Victoria (on Vancouver Island), and spent the day visiting the Royal B.C. Museum, where I arranged a private tour with a docent there so I could see two incredible artifacts: enormous Chinese freemason masks and one of the world’s only remaining tapa cloth books compiled by Captain Cook on his last voyage to the Pacific. From there, we walked over to the Grand Pacific Hotel and had a three-hour long West Coast high tea session. Before the sea plane took off for our sunset ride back to Vancouver, we took a quick jaunt to Victoria’s Chinatown and a lovely walk around some of the pretty tree-lined, European-style neighborhoods. I could absolutely see myself falling in love with Victoria and living here, very, very happily.

Boston, Massachusetts

WITS15 Boston

In March, I held my first creative workshop for professional travel bloggers at the 2nd annual Women in Travel Summit in Boston. It was the perfect city for a get-to-know-you networking event, as it was small enough to walk around with new friends and full of things to do. I’d never been to Boston before, and though I only had a little less than a week to explore it, what I found–quirky cafes, cobblestone alleys, tons of amazing Chinese dumpling shops, a million universities, and more Italian restaurants than I could count–filled my heart and spirit with joy.

I even stayed with 5 women I’d never met before in one room filled with bunk beds at the super cool Hostelling International Boston. It was delightfully throwback to my years as a hostel-goer but trendy (and clean) enough to feel like a funky loft apartment. Totally a do-again.

New Orleans, Louisiana

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In May, I visited another American city that I’d never been to before: gritty, spunky, sweaty New Orleans. Two of our friends had decided on New Orleans for their destination wedding, so, as you can imagine, their entire day was completely destination-driven. From their sweet ceremony at the Irish Cultural Center to the mile-long second line parade down the streets of the French Quarter (led by, of course, a three-piece brass band and over 100 guests waving white handkerchiefs) to the shrimp and grits on the wedding menu and the reception in a loft-style warehouse, I felt completely and utterly taken by the city. As part of my ongoing work with the New Orleans CVB, Ryan and I stayed in a garret room–aka, a room with no windows–in the famous Degas House, where generations of artists and writers have come to find solitude and inspiration from the city.

I loved it. The trees with huge swaths of moss hanging from them, as if suspended in time, the white wraparound porches, the humid, thick air, the delectable gumbo, the rebuilding and resistance of the city and its people in the wake of Katrina, the fact that so much of the city still needs care, the kind people with their particular New Orleans lilt, the musicians with their dreadlocks, mismatched clothes, coin buckets, and joyful faces….it all felt, so, surreal and yet entirely natural, like the whole history of one place was wrapped up in one moment, existing unilaterally.

St. Petersburg, Russia

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May held the magic of Russia. This trip was truly the trip of a lifetime, because 1) I was lucky enough to travel with Viking River Cruises on their Waterways of the Tsars outreach and 2) I got to take my mom, who, before May had never had a passport, with me. You really have to see St. Petersburg to understand its undeniable magic and its complicated history, and you’ll never meet prouder people. It’s a city of canals, of world-renowned art, of cafes and restaurants featuring global cuisine, of winding streets, of onion-domed cathedrals painted in brilliant candy colors, of street markets, a mishmash of Renaissance architecture, Communist-Era blocs, and modern Western-style apartments. It’s also a weirdly quiet city by day, making it perfect for leisurely strolls and long conversations over cappuccinos. Our three days here were three of the most unforgettable days I’ve ever had, as so much of what I thought about Russia got flipped upside-down, turned on its head, and refined. St. Petersburg reminded me why travel is so critical to our lives.

Chandler, Arizona

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In late spring of this year, I was invited to attend the Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa’s grand re-opening of its restaurant, Ko’Sin. In the Pima language, which is the native language of the people who historically lived on the river here, ko’sin simply means kitchen. At the Ko’Sin restaurant inside the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa just outside Phoenix, Arizona, where veh pug means beginning, hai chu hugimeans main course, and wamichtha means fry bread, food takes on whole new meanings here. As homage to the magnificent Sonoran desert landscape and the decadent restaurant menu, the Wild Horse resort is committed to local culture and preservation. Not only was the entire resort designed to be a place of honor and respect for the Gila River Indian heritage and culture, the architecture, design, art, and stories of the Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh tribes were celebrated in every detail imaginable, indoors and out.

A small group of bloggers, writers, and PR people joined the culinary team and the rest of the Wild Horse Pass staff for a lovely night of sample dishes, marshmallows and singing by the fire, and a hauntingly stunning sunset over the Sierra Estrella Mountain Range. As we sat and talked to the flute player, a many-generations old member of the Pima tribe and a man who makes all his own instruments, I realized that in my seven years in Tucson, I’d never really given Phoenix a chance. I’m so glad I did.

Puerto Penasco, Mexico

Blog Posts

When people think of going to Mexico for holiday, most people don’t think of this tiny border town on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, just three hours from Tucson, but I’ll tell you something: I absolutely adore this dusty, abrasive, desert town. It’s sandy, relatively poor, and looks like it’s been sitting still since the 1990s when problems with the border halted nearly all construction, and yet, I love it. It’s unbelievably quiet, its beaches are long, wide, and flat, its water is clean and clear, and its downtown bustles with locals buying fruits and fish and tourists buying trinkets and souvenirs. There are some delicious restaurants, too, serving up all kinds of tamales, quesadillas, and, of course, Sonoran burros (our word for the burrito out here).

Though we’ve been to this Arizona-dweller’s seaside paradise many times before, this summer’s trip was extra-special, because it would be the last time my friends and I would all drive down together before Ryan and I moved to California. The weekend held a kind of joyful magic in the air–we drank a ton of margaritas, we talked about our lives, our friendships, our writing, and our futures, we danced on the rooftop of our two-story Airbnb rental, overlooking the sea, and we cried. Against the sandy desert backdrop of modest Puerto Penasco, it was the most perfect weekend I could have imagined.

The tequila-induced late-night dancing on the beach to 1990s hip hop music didn’t hurt, either.

Long Beach, California

Long Beach 8

The one place I didn’t really travel to, so to speak. I’ve been living here since mid-August, after having taken a job just up the hill at a small college in Palos Verdes. Long Beach itself is equal parts the funkiness of Tucson with the elegance of L.A., so I’m still trying to figure out how I fit in here. I always dreamed of living the beach life, of waking up to sea smells and blustery breezes, of coming home with sandy feet and sun-kissed shoulders after a long day of paddleboarding, of hosting the many guests and friends who would come and stay with us.

Things are, of course, a little bit different than that. I’m still getting used to the fact that houses are crammed together and that rent for a two-bedroom apartment is prohibitively expensive, that people don’t really ever say hello to me on the street and look at me in terror when I wave at them, and that our two cats Giuseppe and Luigi no longer have a yard to go out in during the long, lazy mornings. Of course, it’s stunningly beautiful here–the weather is magnificent, the beach is beautiful, the sunsets are lovely, and the restaurants, bars, and shops all walking distance from me are fantastic and represent all walks of life and cuisine from all over the world. We’ve hosted some dear friends and look forward to hosting more, and we take daily jogs on the beach. So far, Long Beach has been both kind and overwhelming, a study in contrasts.

Jerusalem, Israel

Jerusalem

2015 was the year I went to two of the most fascinating and complicated countries in the entire world. In October, I had the rare and incredible opportunity to visit Israel, the tiny sliver in the Middle East that seems to hold the history of the world in its small, oblong shape, along with tourism marketing organization Geoffrey Weill, the Israel Ministry of Tourism, and four other amazing bloggers and writers. We happened to go at a particularly difficult time: in the days leading up to our visit, headlines like “Is This the Third Intifada?” and “Tensions Mount in Jerusalem” captured the public’s attention and were the first hits on Google searches about Israel. The violence was real, and I went to this country in the thick of murders and heightened disagreements between the Israelis and Palestinians. And yet, in Jerusalem, I only felt a sense of serenity, a calmness that I can’t quite replicate, yet, in words, even knowing that just around the corner were violent acts, stabbings, and people afraid for what would come. Luckily, in December, we still aren’t facing another intifada yet, and one can only hope that the tensions don’t ever escalate that far again.

One thing that’s particularly worth noting about this trip, more than the memories I have that will last me my lifetime, is that it was the first trip I’ve been on in which I completely filled up my notebook–every. single. page. Exploring ancient cities, unearthed cobblestone streets dating thousands of years, boats brought up out of the Sea of Galilee from Jesus’ time….Israel will upend you, make you question everything, make you understand the depth of the world’s monotheistic religions, make you fall in love, over and over again, with hummus. It’s all there.

Dahlonega, Georgia

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My hometown of Atlanta is definitely worth visiting, but what a lot of people don’t do when they come to my home state is drive up north to some of the adorable little towns near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Dahlonega, a town of only 5,000 people with one of the cutest downtowns I’ve seen in small-town America and some of the best wineries in the Southeast, is one of these places. While my dear friend Magda, who I met in Malta nearly 11 years ago, was visiting me last week from Amsterdam, I decided to take her up there for the day to show her a bit of the south she hadn’t seen before. We ate a buffet of chicken-fried steak and collard greens at the Smith House, a historic house near downtown, shopped the cute little boutiques, stopped at The Crimson Moon and struck up a two-hour conversation with the two bartenders there, and tried a new recipe from Sweetwater, a local Atlanta brewery. We didn’t leave quietly, either: People were even waving to us as we pulled away in our quirky little rental car, an itty-bitty bright-red Chevrolet Spark.

I’d say, all in all, I had a pretty lucky year. As always, life is complicated, full of the good, the bad, and either the things we don’t want to face or the things we’ve long ignored. Travel doesn’t relieve us of our troubles, cure our demons, or make our lives easier, but it has always helped me find perspective, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

May 2016 be your year of light, with promises fulfilled, strength and patience to get through the difficult times, and lots of joy and beautiful travels!

Yours in travel,

Kristin

Filed Under: Israel, Mexico, Russia, Travel, Travel Writing, United States Tagged With: cruise, culture, encounters, food, history, Israel, Russia, Viking River Cruises, Year in review

One Week in Israel

October 14, 2015 by Kristin Winet 6 Comments

I’m sitting next to an Israeli-American college student named Edan who has just told me two very different things. “There’s just this vibe in Israel,” he said first, an electric wistfulness in his deep brown eyes. Then, he hesitates and smiles in the way that someone smiles when they’re about to say something they can’t believe they’re about to say. “But, you really picked a hell of a time to come here.”

I know what he means—I’m not immune to the media headlines, the sensationalized rhetoric, the news stories from CNN and the BBC capitalizing on the mounting events that some news personalities have started calling the stirrings of The Third Intifada. I’ve been hearing it because I can’t not hear it—it’s literally everywhere, every time I open my internet browser. Palestinian-Israeli Tensions Mount in Jerusalem. Jerusalem Abandoned After Two Israelis Shot in City Center. Rocks Thrown at Innocent Bystanders in the Streets.

My friend Yolanda, who lives outside of Tel Aviv, has sent me the news articles from The Jerusalem Post—articles whose headlines are no less sensational—and has told me that, although she’s never said this to anyone before, we should avoid the Old City completely, because the situation there is just too unstable. I ask my seatmate about “the state of things,” what he thinks about these undeniable and interminable tensions that have become a daily part of life in this tortured little country, this complex, sacred space, in the heart of the Mediterranean. He shrugs and tells me this: “It’s just a part of who we are. It’s like, at some time or another, everybody is either oppressing or the oppressed.” His comment, though meant to be exasperated, tells me more about the way 20-somethings feel about Israel than anything else I’ve read.

Edan and I spend the next hour talking about what Israel is really like. As an American whose grandparents still live in Haifa, he is intimately connected to both cultures, and he decided to attend university in Israel so he could finally have the chance to see what life was really like for him, an American Jew with tangible roots to his homeland. As a budding entrepreneur, he is going to business school in Israel because he wanted to meet other young Israelis and he wanted to get a multinational education. Eventually, he wants to start a line of fashion jeans for hipsters with stores in both L.A. and Tel Aviv, the two most magnetic, sensual, misunderstood cities in the world.

So, here we are. I’m on an airplane to Rome, sailing once again over the Atlantic Ocean, to a place I’ve only imagined in my dreams. To a place that, until recently, I only knew as a country where my dear friends Alison and Joel took their birthright trips, as a legendary place that was mentioned in my Sunday school stories, as a nativity scene on my parents’ bookshelf during the winter holidays. I also knew, somewhere in this mix, that it was also a place as inextricably tied to occupation and political tension as the word Bethlehem is to the Christmas play we used to enact at school each year with white kids wearing brown leather sandals with straps and tunics too big for their child-sized bodies.

I’m on an airplane to Rome, and then to Tel Aviv, to a place that, yes, reminds me that this chosen passion of mine, to journey, to experience, to write, to capture scenes as best I can with a lens, often comes with a price. It requires me to face trauma, to face insecurity and cultural uncertainties, to open myself up to the possibility that yes, life is not perfect, not elsewhere, and not at home; it is not without political strife; it is not without raced, gendered, and socio-economic realities. I think that this is one of the first lessons that Israel can teach me—that living with uncertainty is as undeniable a part of life as getting out of bed in the morning. It’s a way of life, it’s a reality of life, it’s a daily part of life.

But I also know that I am a better person for having had the chance to learn these things. And I’m not afraid—I’m electrified. I can’t wait. I want to understand more fully the lives the Israelis and the Palestinians live and experience every day. I hope, that even though I will be a temporary visitor in their home, that they will allow me to ask, and that they will tell me. What we see in the media is never, ever the full story, and I am so utterly grateful for this opportunity to learn what that actually means. I’ve been to places recovering from war before, places like Medellín, Ciudad Juarez, and Malta, but I’ve never been to a place that fears a new war is on the horizon.

Map of Where We’re Going

So, let’s see what our week in Israel looks like. Of course, our itinerary might—and almost certainly will—change depending on the current political situation, road traffic, and/or time and crowd constraints, but here’s what the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has planned for us.

Imagine a circle, starting at Ben Gurion International Airport (the blue airplane icon). Travel up and around in a clockwise circle from there and keep going until you get back to Ben Gurion. Because I could only figure out how to put pins on a Google map and not numbers, envisioning them as pins in a clockwise circle is about the best we’re going to get. That being said, I’ve read that flexibility and adaptability are as much a way of life as anything else around here, so in the spirit of our upcoming journey, let’s just use this as a starting point.

If anything, it’s nice to see an up-close map of Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

israel map

Day 1 – Weds. – Haifa, Old Acre, Beit She’an

After the million hours it’s going to take us to actually get to Israel, we have to get in a bus and ride from the airport up to Haifa, where we’re spending our first night (and at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, a place I am hoping has beautiful pillows and comfortable mattresses….). When we wake up on Wednesday morning, we’re going to start our day touring Haifa, Israel’s third-largest port city (and the name of the dog who lives next door to the Winet cabin in Idaho). We’ll visit the Bahai Shrine and Gardens, which, though I know little about it, seems to be the world’s center for the Bahai faith.

Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism

From there, we’re going to drive across the Galilee to Old Acre, an Ottoman seaport designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we’ll get to see the fishermen at work, shop at a street bazaar, and visit an Israeli bathhouse. After our afternoon in Old Acre, it looks like we’ll head back and check in at the En Gev Holiday Resort kibbutz, where we’ll have what is rumored to be St. Peter’s fish….or descendants of the fish St. Peter used to harvest on the Sea of Galillee two thousand years ago.

Day 2 – Thurs. – Kibbutz En Gev, Caesarea, Jerusalem

We’ll be waking up early Thursday morning for a tour of the kibbutz (commune) before we drive over to Caesarea, a coastal Mediterranean resort town and former Roman capital. We’ll spend some time wandering around the ruins and the ancient theater before heading to the Israel Museum where I will get to see, with these own two blue eyes of mine, the actual Dead Sea Scrolls. For those of you who don’t know what the Dead Sea Scrolls actually are, let me say this: they are the oldest remaining biblical texts in existence. No matter what your beliefs are (or if you even have any), there is something immaculately sacred about these books.

Caesarea1

Flickr/Neta Bartal
Flickr/Neta Bartal
Flickr/bachmont
Flickr/bachmont

Thursday night, we’ll check in to the Dan Panorama Hotel in Jerusalem and get to meet Chef Moshe Bason, a local farm-to-table phenom in Jerusalem whose entire repertoire of recipes is based off of references to foods and cooking techniques mentioned in the Bible. This, too, sounds extraordinary….I’m hoping to steal him away for an interview!

Day 3 – Fri. – City of David, Western Wall, Mt. Zion (Jerusalem)

If everything goes as planned, Friday will be the kind of day that I know I will remember for the rest of my life. It will be that kind of day, the one and only chance I might ever have to walk through, on my own two feet, the world I only know from my Methodist Sunday school classes as a child, the world I know only through books, and stories, and the sermons of my childhood ministers. I will get to see the City of David. I will get to touch the Western Wall, Judaism’s most sacred place on Earth and I will get to walk through the Western Wall Tunnels. I will get to stroll down the cobblestoned alleys of the Cardo, the Roman-Byzantine streets that were once trod by people thousands of years older than me.

Flickr/Andrew Kalat
Flickr/Andrew Kalat
Flickr/momo
Flickr/momo

I will visit Mt. Zion, and I will see the room of Jesus’ Last Supper. I will dine in the old city center, and I will see the streets light up with life. Or so I’ve heard.

I hope, hope, hope with all of my heart that the Old City is reopened to the public and is safe by Friday. A precarious time, but in Israel, always a precarious time.

Day 4 – Sat. – Dead Sea, Judean Desert

Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism

And today, I will float on water. And we will visit the absolute lowest point on the planet. I think we’re also supposed to take a Jeep safari to Mout Sedom, a place comprised entirely of salt.

We will bathe in the sea and, according to my itinerary, put on the black mud. I have no idea what this black mud of which they speak actually is, but I guess we’ll find out together.

Tonight, we’ll spend our last night at the Leonardo Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem.

Day 5 – Sun. – Tel Aviv

In the morning, we’ll hit the road again and head to the National Musem of the Holocaust in Yad Vashem. From there, we’ll drive to the city of Tel Aviv, Israel’s cultural, financial, commercial, and entertainment center. We’ll walk through Neve Tzekek, Tel Aviv’s oldest neighborhood from the 1800s, and we’ll get to stop in some art galleries, cafes, and boutiques.

Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism
Flickr/Israeltourism

From the city center, we head to Old Jaffa, an ancient seaport on the coast that has (so I’ve heard) been transformed into a vibrant vacation spot for Israelis and international visitors. We’ll visit some museums, walk around, have dinner at Wilhemina, a restaurant in a former German colony, and hit the Tel Aviv nightlife, a nightlife I’ve heard is like nowhere else on earth.

Day 6 – Mon. – Tel Aviv

And then, just like that, our last day. Our plan, as of now, is to visit the Carmel open-air market, to travel to the White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its unique whitewashed, modern architecture, and to take a swim in the Mediterranean and reflect on our voyage.

We will have a special bon voyage dinner with the Ministry of Tourism at a local restaurant called, interestingly, Dr. Shakshuka. We will sleep a few hours, check out of our hotel at 1:30 in the morning, and leave for the airport.

I will be home, in the insanity of flights, time changes, and the weirdness of the Circadian rhythm, by 11:45 a.m.

So, without further ado, shalom Israel!

Yours in travel,

Kristin

—

All photographs from Flickr’s Creative Commons. I thank them for their generosity and I hope my photos turn out just as beautifully!

I’m excited to be traveling to Israel and exploring this magnificent holy land with the Israel Ministry of Tourism.

Filed Under: Israel, Middle East, Travel, Travel Writing Tagged With: Biblical landscapes, culture, encounters, food, history, Israel, Israel Ministry of Tourism, Jerusalem, place-based writing, travel writing

About Me

KristinPhoto4

Who is Kristin?

I am an award-winning writer, photographer, and teacher. I am also a traveler, by either heart or experience (sometimes I’m not sure which!) and I abide by a globally-minded feminist ethos in everything I do: by living carefully, living mindfully, and living compassionately. I write to inspire, to have fun, to catch interesting details and share them, to notice beautiful people, places, and experiences, to find beauty in the world where I can, and to teach other travelers to respect the places they tread and to think critically about the privilege of a traveling life.

This is why I started Bon Touriste– to inspire and be inspired, to find beauty in our complex world, and to never give up the childlike wonder of traveling.

What’s My Story?

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, the furthest I traveled was to California (once, I think, for my aunt and uncle’s wedding) and to New York to visit my grandma. My penchant for travel arrived, quite unexpectedly, during my college years at the University of Georgia: after a summer-abroad program that took me to the shores of lovely Valencia, Spain, I decided to pack up and move to the very small, intensely gorgeous Mediterranean island of Malta to work at an international English school, where I fell madly in love with Mediterranean pizza, the Maltese language, and my international cohort of teachers (many of whom I still travel with today!).

malta2

malta

After graduating from college, I accepted a position as a visiting English instructor at a university in the lovely and haunting Cartagena, Colombia. There, I learned to love empanadas, García Marquéz, dancing (though I’ve still got two left feet), a whole lot of Spanish, and, quite unexpectedly, teaching.

I completed my MFA in creative nonfiction (with an emphasis in travel writing) from the University of Arizona in 2009 while teaching writing courses to undergraduates and working as the nonfiction editor for Sonora Review, a national literary magazine.  My creative work—which is a book-length memoir told in vignettes—examines the idea of memory through objects as I revisit the first three countries I ever traveled to for an extended period of time in my early 20s: Spain, Malta, and Colombia. I am currently revising my book and hope to see it find a home somewhere by the end of this year 🙂

In addition to keeping up with my website, I edit a weekly interview segment with travel industry professionals, go on a number of international voyages and local trips each year, work with various media campaigns–both at home and abroad–and review hotels and creative or unusual accommodation options around the world. I love thinking about my responsibility as a traveler and my capabilities (as well as limitations) that come with this privileged and amazing work. I hope that comes through in my writing.

switerland3

When I’m not traveling and writing, I’m working on my graduate degree in Rhetoric & Composition and writing my dissertation on contemporary tourism and digital media practices. If you’re into such scholarly things, I invite you to read more about my dissertation project on my Dissertation page!

Where Am I Now?

I lived in the lush and beautiful Sonoran Desert in Tucson, Arizona for eight years with my incredible husband Ryan, who is an artist, a graphic novelist, and a poet (check out his co-run literary journal of experimental poetry, The Offending Adam). When we weren’t working, we’d take a quick jaunt down to Mexico for the weekend with our best friends for fresh mangoes, sandy beaches, and lots of Spanish. I, of course, did most of the talking (and I love it).

mexico

After dating for six years, Ryan and I finally got hitched in a little garden ceremony in the summer of 2013 at The Thursday Club–a women’s philanthropy club–near the Sunset Cliffs in San Diego.

We even designed our wedding invitations ourselves! (And of course I picked a travel theme). Here’s a peek:

DSC_0048

We now live in a cute little townhouse in sleepy Winter Park, Florida (it’s near Orlando) with our two adorable cats, an orange tabby named Giuseppe and a grey pixiebob named Luigi. We have no idea what the future holds for us, but with me as the spontaneous extravert and him as the more stay-at-home bookworm, I’m sure we’ll land in exactly the right place 🙂

Where Have I Been?

Since I studied abroad in Spain during college ten years ago, I have made enough money scrimping by and taking part-time and freelance jobs to travel to over 35 different countries. That number still amazes me. As someone who is not independently wealthy or getting someone else to foot the bill for me, I am humbled and honored to do this work I do–and I hope it carries me through for the rest of my life.

KristinPhoto2
Hanging out with sea animals in Xiao Liuqiu, Taiwan on my first press trip in 2012

I’ve spent time living and teaching in both Europe and South America, and I’ve traveled throughout North America, the Caribbean, and Asia. There’s still so, so much more to see.

What Do I Believe About Travel?

I am, first and foremost, an independent traveler (although I do participate in FAM trips–that’s industry lingo for press trip–a few times a year). I believe in traveling slowly, in savoring moments, in trying new languages, in getting lost for no particular reason, in visiting those little-known places, in leaving positive impressions, in finding laughter in unexpected encounters. I believe in participation, in immersion, in confusion, in giving up what we can to gain the beauty of new experience, and in looking forward to those unexpected meaningful, memorable moments that happen when we simply let go and live. I believe in learning about local foods, working sustainability to leave small footprints, and connecting with local communities.

And I am committed to helping other curious people believe that they, too, can make their dreams come true.

switzerland

And I can’t wait to meet you and hear about your journey, too! Email me at kristin [at] kristinwinet [dot] com if you’d like to chat, get some advice on traveling, or just share tips, books, or awesome resources. I’d love to hear from you!

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