SHE'S BAAAAACK

Well here I am , back in the good old US of A. I have to say it is nice to be home.. We arrived back in Atlanta around 530 a.m. yesterday and got home to Alabama, by early afternoon, I was very happy to see my pups.. Cookie was a little traumatized and upset about our being gone so long but she seems okay.. Bazzie was happy as usual.. Cookie is still having a hard time eating unless we are in the kitchen with her. Hopefully after a few days of being back in her normal routine she will be okay..

As for our trip. well I am going to be working on the Israel blog over the next couple of weeks, and I will let you know when everything is set up over there.

One of the first things that really struck me was that in Israel , obesity is very illusive.. Perhaps it is because you do so much walking there.. I really am not sure why but I was surely in the minority there. Most days we were walking between 3 and 5 miles and an occasional 7 miles here and there. We traveresed the steps of the Persian Gardens.. 700 steps down. We walked all over Massada and walked down 4 flights of stairs in the blazing hot sun and then proceeded to walk back up. We walked down the hills of Petra to the vast temple ruins ala Indiana Jones. That day was most memorable, crossing into Jordan by foot and then touring Petra. I happened to get sick that day .. some kind of bug from the water.. lets just say while the people where nice the facilities were barely tolerable. I wont go into details but had not been for the drugs.. I would not have been able to complete the 7 mile walk .. 3.5 down and 3.5 up the hill. In Petra you can purchase drugs with out an RX , so between my two brother in laws who are doctors and my sister in law who is a nurse they got me some meds.. that helped me get better quickly. I also was host to a huge bite of some kind of flying lord knows what. My arm looked like Popeye the sailorman. but aside from some dry skin I am all healed up. We saw the ruins of Ceserea, the sea grottos of Rosh Hanikra on the border of Lebanon and Israel. In short we covered Israel from the Golan Heights down to the Negev desert. The food was interesting most of the time and very tasty. I loved the Israeli salad which consists of finely chopped veggies, cucumbers, tomato, various colors of peppers, green onion, parsley, jicama, and a host of other hearty veggies all mixed with a little olive oil and lemon juice.. very tasty .... Some of the restaraunts are good like Olive in Tel Aviv, the food was devine there. Breakfasts are unique there in that they feature all kinds of salads and cold veggies as well as more tradtionally american fare. The falafal we had was wonderful we ate our first falafal in a little village Zichron Ya akov. It was a culinary adventure.. a lot of where we ate you might have turned your back on.. but we opted to be adventurous eaters..

Thats all I have for now.. I am so tired still I can not get my internal clock to regulate yet.. Will write more soon.

Glad to be home..

Wish me well

Wish you well too

Be sure and stop by THE NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE also I am slowly adding pictures to my flickr account from the trip so stop by there too.