March 7, 2001

One last look from the rooftop of our host’s home in Gaza, Palestine.

We wanted to spend one more day in Gaza (where no one tried to eat us!), but had to get to Jerusalem to take care of some business. We took the two hour taxi ride across the Strip, Elizabeth getting car sick on the way - something about the combination of stop and go traffic, loud music, the heat, and tanks everywhere, maybe?

One of the ubiquitous donkey carts of Gaza.

When we reached the split road of Kfar Darom, the bottleneck of Palestinian taxis was overwhelming. But even worse was the loud "boom" we heard as we passed the Israeli tank (at least one gun is always pointed at the traffic) - turned out to be from an airplane, probably, but not the noise you want to hear then. We were dropped off at the Palestinian side, and walked the 100 yards to the Israeli side (taxi drivers offering to take us for a dollar as they waited for business that would never come). The Israeli interrogation consisted of one question, "What does the 'III' in your name mean?"

Ice cream!!!

We grabbed a waiting taxi to Jerusalem, where we enjoyed the company of good friends, real ice cream, an uplifting episode of "Ally McBeal", and a rousing game of Boggle.