It was like going back to the times of the Ben Hur movie! I was thrilled! Caesarea Maritima was built from 25 to 13 BC by King Herod (yes, the King Herod of the Bible) as a major port for the Roman Empire. It was the place where Pontius Pilate governed during the time of …
Author: The Autonomous Traveler
My life has been metamorphosis from a shy, scared little girl to an adventurous woman who travels the world by herself. I am a grandmother and a retired teacher who is a lifelong learner with a degree in the social sciences. My trips are opportunities to directly experience the wonders of world in order to understand what unites us all and, as a result, to better understand myself.
Israel-The Seashell Lottery
On April 11, 1906, sixty Jewish families moved north from nearby Jaffa to the sand dunes of the Mediterranean to establish a new community. A lottery was held to pair families with a building plot. Using sixty white shells imprinted with each family's name and sixty grey shells each showing the number of a single …
Israel-Finding Meaning in Hard Times
If I hadn't had my accident in Israel, I would have never met the Muslim man who directed me to a deeper understanding of Judaism. I met him in Syracuse, New York, and because of my injuries, he knew I had gone to Israel. I sensed that he was a traveler, too, and asked where …
Israel-The Iron Dome
Picture courtesy of wisemoneyisrael.com The Iron Dome is a mobile missile launching system that uses a specific algorithm to calculate if an enemy missile is about to strike a populated area. With 90% accuracy, the launcher sends out its own missiles to explode the enemy missiles in the air. Israel is a country surrounded by …
Israel- Start Up Nation
My tour took me to The Israeli Stock Exchange in Tel Aviv and The Center for Israeli Innovation. Sorry, but I need to use an idiom (all my books on writing frown on this). Here it goes, I was "blown away" by what I saw and learned there. Tel Aviv is called the Silicon Wadi …
Israel-Remembering The Holocaust
I was raised in the rural part of Western New York State and never knew any Jewish people. But growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, my teenage imagination and heart were pierced by the life and death of a Jewish girl named Anne Frank. During my childhood, the impact of WWII was still very …
Tel Aviv, Israel
I've never been so excited about going on a trip as I was about going to Israel. Friends on Facebook were looking forward to my posts and pictures, but many cautioned me to stay safe and be careful. One friend even asked why I wanted to go to a place "so, so dangerous". The morning …
Israel-The Left Turn
My trip, like my life, was subject to an unexpected twist. If you read my blog in the next few weeks, you will find out all the details of my surprise adventure in Israel. My trip took an unexpected left turn, like the gate at a fort built by the Crusaders in the early 1200s …
Israel Next-Why?
Back home, surrounded by my familiar things, I continue to learn, to wander in my mind back to India. The Hindus divide life into four stages. At age 70, I find myself in the last stage, Sannyasa, a time for renunciation. The Hindus see this as a time to move away from material concerns and …
Flesh and Blood, Bits and Pieces
I walk for hours. Sometimes, my hip would end up hurting from the unevenness of the trek, one foot on the shore, the other in the water. I have learned to wear an old pair of sneakers tied tightly to prevent rocks from getting in my shoes. My hair is long enough to pull back …
The Autonomous Traveler 