Tel Aviv proper to the north of Jaffa.
This was a business trip to one of my company's sites (BTG, a Ferring company) and a start-up biotech with whom we have a project. Both are located about 40 minutes south of Tel Aviv. I flew in the day before to allow for a chance to adapt to the time zone 8 hours east of Saint Paul. We stayed at the Market House Hotel in the old city near the coast - it's an excellent hotel and I'll try to stay there if/when I come back.
As a business trip, there is not an extensive travelogue.
Tel Aviv proper to the north of Jaffa.
Looking southward.
Minaret of a local mosque.
Plaza in old town Jaffa with palms, and the ocean in the distance.
Jaffa had a large population of feral cats.
The Jaffa Clock Tower.
This was the salad course - we didn't really have much room for the entrée.
We scheduled an extra day in case we needed more time at BTG or the biotech, but none was required. So our colleagues at BTG helped arrange a driver and tour guide for the Old City Jerusalem. The rains held off during the morning tour and through lunch, but the skies opened later in the afternoon with a steady and even heavy rainfall.
Looking down David Street from Jaffa Gate.
Tower of David.
Tile/ceramicist shop in the Armenian Quarter. I got my souvenir refrigerator magnet when we returned here.
Ken and guide Oren in the monastery in the Armenian Quarter.
Cross and fresco.
Islamic pattern in the monastery.
Map of the Old City.
Orthodox pedestrian exiting Zion Gate.
The pock marks left by bullets from the violent past.
Ken - on our way to the site of the Last Supper.
Another Orthodox pedestrian.
The church at the end of the alley - the Last Supper site was nearby.
Location of the Last Supper. The building was constructed in the Middle Ages at the putative site.
Stained glass window with Islamic script.
Another feral cat on patrol.
The archetectural detail of the back and forth arches (and lanterns) caught my eye.
Excavation of ruins from the Roman era - the main market street.
A Roman era shop along the market street.
Feline sunning in winter.
Modern mural imagining the scene in the Roman era along the market street.
One of many arcades lined with shops.
Ken and Oren descending stair that lead to the Western Wall.
The Dome of the Rock.
The minaret and dome of Al-Aqsa mosque.
Ornament on the top of the dome of Al-Aqsa.
Prayers at the Western Wall.
My prayer is the tightly rolled paper on the left against the stone.
Studiously begging feral feline.
Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - ornate ceiling and mosaics.
The center mosaic is older, surrounded by more recent work.
One of the stations of the Cross, and the line leading to it.
Climbing the steps from one of the lower shrines.
Crusader graffiti.
Shrine of the Holy Sepulcher (and the line leading to it).
The dome over the shring with more lamps.
The dome of the Shrine inside the dome of the church.
Saint Mark Street. (taken by Ken on his cell phone)
Virginia Tech -
in Hebrew!
Another shop lined arcade.
The wine bar we retreated to when the rains came (on the arcade in the previous image).
We met our driver back at Jaffa gate at the designated time, and he drove us back near Tel Aviv through the rain where we joined the BTG staff for dinner before heading to the airport for our flights back to the US.
When I got back to work, I found a delightful surprise from the team.
A custom Hawai'ian shirt with Pippin lurking behind the cut-leaf philodendron (03 February).
The note that came with the shirt (03 February).
The background on the webpages for this trip is a shot of the stones of the Western Wall. I've altered the color, but not the pattern, to match the color scheme of this site. For my own memory: this is done in Photoshop, not Lightroom. Fiddling with the properties the Hue/Saturation adjustment has a 'colorize' option, where I ended up selecting the values +60 hue, +15 saturation, and 0 lightness.
The images on the site, unless otherwise noted, were taken using an Olympus E-M10 II (4608 x 3456 pixel RAW file, ~16 MB) or an iPhone 11.
I've whittled the image size down to two sizes - a thumbnail I use on the page for the day, and a 1280x960 pixel (or 960x1280 pixel, assuming I haven't cropped or altered the size) image that I've saved optimized for web usage.
The images are processed using Lightroom, a trimmed down version of Adobe Photoshop.