#abraham hostel

埃拉特新開放旅館！背包客首選的Abraham 青年旅館 (全新開幕、離巴士站走路3分鐘、超值宿舍房) Abraham Hostel Eilat

以色列連鎖青年旅館 Abraham Hostel，終於在疫情之後順利在紅海城市埃拉特(Eilat)開幕啦！埃拉特是以色列最南邊的免稅城市，物價比較低，有美麗的死海，也是進出埃及或約旦的南部關口必經的城市，如果在找Eilat的住宿，不管是背包客還是家庭，這裡都有很適合的房間！品質保證！ (more…)

Abraham Hostel – Ahava Adventures in Jerusalem – Walk With Me, Steve Martin, Love For His People

Steve Martin, David Peterman in front of the Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem, Israel April 2022 April 19, 2022 Ahava Adventures in Jerusalem Walk with me, Steve Martin, of Love For His People ministry in Charlotte, NC – recorded Monday 04.04.22 – a tour of the Abraham Hostel in central Jerusalem. Come walk with me! David Peterman was with me on the 10-day Ahava Adventure to Jerusalem. (Pictured in…

Tracing Israel & Palestine – Must See In Israel and Palestine

Tracing Israel & Palestine – Must See In Israel and Palestine   Israel and Palestine combined has an unending list of attractions and must see places you have to see during your visit. Israel and Palestine will take you to a completely different world, from the mountainous North of Israel that offers a great winter to the desert that will leave your jaw dropped for its beyond the reality beauty.…

Israel: Masada-Ein Gedi-Dead Sea

Shalom! We are now continuing this blog to Day 5 of our journey here in Israel. Like I said, this is a Semi-DIY trip, which means part of this trip has tour packages involved. Israel is a huge place and most of its National Parks aren’t easily accessible to public transportation.

So here is where you would need a hostel that offers tour packages. Thankfully, Abraham Hostelhas those! You can book…

With that figured out, we went downstairs for yummy breakfast. The Eilat Youth Hostel definitely has the best breakfast spread I have ever seen at a hostel. We hailed a cab and headed toward Dolphin Reef. The cab driver was so friendly and we chatted the entire time. I told him that I want to come back and work on a Kibbutz and he said that after a week of working on one I’d call home saying, “Mommy come get me. It’s too harddddd.” It was hilarious and we had quite the laugh. Upon entering Dolphin Reef, we were struck by its beauty. It was virtually empty when we arrived, so it was just us, the glistening water, and the dolphins.

It really was quite a unique area. The snorkeling was a major letdown and a waste of time, but oh well.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing (and unintentionally frying) on the beautiful beach, and made our final decision to catch the 4:45pm bus back to Jerusalem. We left Dolphin Reef, grabbed a quick falafel, and caught the four and a half hour bus. We stayed at the oh-so-fabulous Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem, watched some of the USA World Cup game in the overcrowded and rambunctious common area, and passed out for a few hours.

I flew out of Amsterdam last night at around 9pm, and when I arrived at Ben Gurion Airport, it was the dead of night. The concourse was completely deserted. I ended up waiting for a sherut (a shared taxi) for a very long time, because there was some concern over whether or not it would be possible to get to Jerusalem under the weather conditions. I didn't really know what was going on, but it turns out Jerusalem had experienced their biggest snow storm since the early 90s, and most of the roads were closed.

Eventually, the sherut drivers appeared and decided that if all the sherutim left together, it might help. As the driver was listening to the radio, though, it turned out that all the roads into Jerusalem were closed. According to the weather report, there had been a couple bus accidents, and the snow was about 7cm high. (Not high by Chicago standards, but for a city that doesn't have a system in place for dealing with snowfall, this was a big deal.) There was a couple from Finland and a couple girls from Norway on the sherut as well. I helped translate what was happening for them, which was a big test of my Hebrew skills! After awhile, some of the Israelis on the bus helped me out.

After we'd been sitting in the airport parking lot for a good long time, I started to think it might be better for me to stay in Tel Aviv, catch a bus to the central station, and go stay with family friends there. But when some other passengers tried to get off the sherut, the driver was really emphatic and loudly coerced them into staying.

Eventually, we headed out, but as we approached Jerusalem, we were forced to pull over. All the roads were closed. The Norwegians and the Finnish were laughing, because when they left home, there wasn't any snow. They definitely didn't expect to come to a snowy Middle East.

At this point, it was around 5am, and I'd barely slept since the flight to Amsterdam. I dozed off in the car, and when I woke up, we were moving again. The driver took us all to the central bus station - the roads weren't clear enough for him to drop us off at our individual addresses. (He also charged us an extra 16 shekels apiece. I understand that under the weather conditions, the trip was more difficult for him, but I wish he'd communicated the price increase to us in advance.)

When we arrived, the Finnish couple and the Norwegian girls wanted my help in finding their way. I barely recognized Jerusalem - it was completely snowed under. The buses weren't running, and I didn't see any taxis, so the only way I would have been able to go out to Baka to meet my sister was if I walked. With my large backpack and growing fatigue, I decided instead to go with the Norwegian girls to their hostel.

We walked down Yaffo street, which was largely unrecognizable underneath all the snow. We passed Machane Yehuda. Huge snow drifts had climbed up the walls, and I had trouble imagining vendors setting up stalls there. We walked to the Abraham Hostel, where unfortunately, I couldn't check in until 2pm. But I reserved a bed in a dorm and stowed my luggage. The guy behind the desk was so surprised when I told him that my final destination was Baka - he thought I should have walked there - but I was honestly so tired that the idea was unfathomable. (It's probably a 45-minute walk under normal conditions - in snow and ice...)

Then the Norwegian girls - Lenna and Louisa - and I ate breakfast at the hostel. We had a really interesting conversation about Norway and about US culture. Louisa had studied abroad at a small school in Wisconsin and talked about how the US education system is so much more intense than the Norwegian system with our endless homework assignments and participation grades and constant quizzes and midterms. In Norway, they just have small assignments that are either accepted or not. If the assignments are not accepted, they can redo them. To take the final, they need to have had 2/3rds of their work accepted, and if they fail the final, they get two tries to make it up. (Maybe I should transfer to a Norwegian school!) We also discussed economic disparity. Lenna explained that in Norway, there are people who are rich and people that are poor, but the middle class is pretty much equal. Whereas in America, the differences even among the middle class are really apparent. Louisa talked about the special treatment more wealthy people get - in America, for example, people who fly business class get to go through a faster security line. In Norway, they have business class, but everyone waits together. Then Lenna told a funny story about how the Norwegian king and crown prince went surfing in her grandmother's hometown, and how flabbergasted her grandmother was to bump into them in a supermarket!

When we were done eating, Louisa and Lemma needed to take time to plan their stay in Israel. (They told me they love Israel - Louisa has been ten times; Lenna, five. I don't think either of them were Jewish. So interesting!) I used the downtime to check my e-mail and Facebook notifications and talk to my friend who's en route to Israel on Birthright. I finished my book as well. It was only 12:30, and I found myself dozing off in the beanbag chair... When I woke up it was almost three, so I checked in and made my bed. I was still super tired and lounged in bed for a couple hours.

When a couple guys came in, I actually woke up. One of them introduced himself to me - his name was Matthew, he was from the north of England. We talked for awhile about our respective travels. He's "wwoofing," which entails working on sustainable farms in exchange for food and shelter. He's been all over the world since high school, and he's not much older than me.  Even though I'm happy to be a university student in a program as strong as Northwestern's theatre program... I sometimes wonder whether I could be just as happy forgoing all those expectations and living moment to moment.

I took an absolutely miserable, freezing shower, and then decided to venture outside. Some of the snow from earlier had melted under foot traffic. I walked down to Ben Yehuda street - it was surreal, almost empty and covered in snow.

I passed Aldo ice cream and absolutely had to get some. (It was my second favorite ice cream shop when I was living here on Year Course! Yes, I cataloged my favorite ice cream shops. Glidah is a serious matter.) Because it was cold outside, eating ice cream didn't really make me much colder.