Day 149

Tuesday June 17^th

Today was a day of traveling. I knew there was a 9:00 bus to the border crossing of Taba. I knew that it was about 25 pounds. Taxi drivers were offering to take us there for 300 pounds each. This would have been way to expensive, albeit much faster. I had not become a fan of buses in my two days of rest, and if the price had been a bit lower I might just have taken it. However, we didn’t, so we showed up there at about 7:45 and bought tickets to Taba. We meet our nameless fellow American traveler there who knew much about Jerusalem, as he spends ever summer in Israel and recommended a few places for us. The Bus didn’t get into Taba until about 1:30. Which means we would have to take the last bus out of Eliat to Jerusalem at 5. After crossing through border control and getting asked a few more questions, because I had come back so recently since my last visit, we got a taxi and headed off to the bus station. Here we got our bus tickets and waited around. During this time, I learned that our friend had a friend who was related to the Debartolo Family, who basically owned one of the major quads at Notre Dame, and also that being a guy is awesome.

The bus finally came and we headed out to Jerusalem on a very crowded bus. It was so crowded that we couldn’t sit together and apparently Megan had to deal with some other goon trying to sleep on her. I just had to deal with bitchy Israeli teens that thought they were entitled to the world or something. This is one thing I love about Egypt. Most people have a humble sense about them, and don’t complain about the little things in life. There are no teens who are angry at the parents or people who get upset simply because they get stuck without a bus seat. This is life, and complaining about it doesn’t do any good. To the most part I agree with them, there are far too many big things to get bugged about than life’s little inconveniences.

We didn’t arrive in Jerusalem until about 9. After walking the 30-45 minutes to the Old City we finally just picked out the closet, cheap double so we could have a place to collaspe in relative comfort. The Golden Gate Inn was our choice, and they gave us a family size room with bathroom for 80 NIS each. Not that bad.