The Dead Sea

It’s known as the Dead Sea because there isn’t any macroscopic aquatic life in the lake due to the high levels of salt in the water. The high levels of salt make it super easy to float in the water – it’s literally impossible to sink. It was kind of tough to hang out in the water though – February is not a good time of year for lounging in the water.

The Dead Sea is located between Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. Theoretically, one could swim from one side to the other without worrying about drowning, but it is a lengthy 15km swim. Not something I’d try, and besides, there’s probably patrols that would stop people from doing that.

The mud here supposedly has health benefits because it has an abundance of certain minerals. We saw people spread the mud all over themselves to reap the benefits of the mud. I tried a little bit on my hands and arms, but the mud just dried out my skin a lot – yeah not doing that again…

Tel Aviv

From the Dead Sea our tour took us to Tel Aviv. What took me by surprise was how much of a beach city it was!

We spent our day in Tel Aviv on the “Shabbat”, the Jewish day of rest, so a lot of places were closed. But we did find some nice meals though!

This is shakshouka, dish of eggs poached in tomato sauce, olive oil and spices. It tastes really similar to tomato sauce, but the poached egg makes everything so much better!

This is a beef tagine, a dish originating from North Africa, but it’s also common in Israel. The name tagine is cooked using a special pot of the same name. Tagines come in many varieties, but they are often savoury stews served with couscous and other vegetables.

And of course, there’s hummus! It’s savoury dish made from cooked, mashed chickpeas blended with other aromatics. The place we went to advertised itself as “the second best hummus in Tel Aviv”. So… what’s the first best hummus in Tel Aviv? I still don’t know the answer, but maybe it’s the one that’s homemade in a local’s home? This is literally the best hummus I’ve ever had, and I’ll compare all the hummus I eat in the future to this one.

That’s pretty much it for Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea – and our two-week trip! We headed to the airport three hours early (Ben Gurion Airport is notorious for having really strict security). There were multiple checkpoints and at one point, a member of the airport security staff asked us to follow him and as we walked he asked us some questions and let us go. The staff checked every nook and cranny of our bags and all of the electronics we had on us before letting us go. From there, we began our journey home.

Photos: Tel Aviv, and the Dead Sea

A while back I bought Groupons for a sushi platter at this restaurant and so today my friends and I went here for dinner to use them.  When we walked in, I went up to the counter and told the lady in German that I made a reservation for four people yesterday.  I then overheard her speaking Mandarin to her colleague.  It threw me off since I expected the staff there to be Japanese (even though a lot of Chinese people run sushi restaurants in Vancouver).  Knowing that the lady spoke Mandarin, I started speaking that instead and I told her that we wanted to use Groupons.  She seemed really surprised at how I started speaking Chinese and asked where I was from.  I told her I was from Hong Kong and she told me she was from Korea.  That totally took me aback.  For a Korean, she spoke Mandarin as well as someone natively Chinese.  She said that I spoke pretty good Mandarin for someone that came from Hong Kong (but maybe that’s just her being polite).  After that brief chat, she then invited us to sit anywhere we wanted and gave us our food menus.

Looking through the menu, I realized the restaurant had more than just Japanese food.  It had Korean and Chinese food.  The last few pages of my menu had some items written only in Chinese and my friend didn’t have those pages in their menus (likely because they knew that I knew Chinese).  It turns out they served the Cantonese style chicken feet (鳳爪)!  I definitely had to order that one.  I also ordered a bowl of Kimchi as I hadn’t eaten that in a while.  I had both of those along with the sushi platter that the Groupon got me.  My friends ordered Gyoza, spicy fried squid (I think it was 椒鹽鮮魷), miso soup, and Inarizushi (fried tofu filled with sushi rice).

My friends didn’t know what it was so I explained it as a Korean version of German sauerkraut except spicy.  I don’t eat Kimchi much, but this one tasted really good.  It had the perfect amount of spiciness.  I guess that is kind of subjective since everyone can handle a different amount of that.

The chicken feet that I ordered didn’t taste as good as I thought it would.  I can’t help but compare the taste with the kind I’ve had in Vancouver.  Some people do say that Vancouver has the best Chinese food in the world and now I’ve begun to see that.  Compared to Vancouver, the meat (pretty much skin I suppose) on the  chicken feet I got here seemed to be a lot “tougher”.  I was really expecting it to be really soft.

Although I didn’t try the miso soup, it looked really delicious.  It looked a lot different that the usual kind that I’ve seen in Vancouver.  I wouldn’t know which one is more legit or better tasting though.  Everything else looked really good and super legit too – especially the fried squid; that looked really good.

After eating our appetizers, we chowed down on the sushi platter.  Almost immediately, the mediocre seafood quality of Stuttgart revealed itself.  The taste was a lot more bland and had less of the natural flavour of the animal itself.  Again, I compared it to Vancouver and it’s really no contest there.  Vancouver has such good access to the ocean for fishing, while Stuttgart is landlocked and relies on frozen fish being delivered. 

Despite that though, I thought that this place had good sushi for a landlocked city. Although, the biggest drawback in eating sushi in Stuttgart is that it’s really expensive. The only reason we went was because of the Groupon that gave us 50% off the sushi platter.  I don’t think I would have gone otherwise.  Seeing that I’m going to be back in Vancouver really soon (16 days by my count), I can have all the amazing Japanese, Chinese and Korean food I want!

On our way out, I had another brief chat with the lady there and it was really difficult for me to understand Mandarin.  It wasn’t the way she spoke, but more so the way I really had to focus my attention to her talking because my Mandarin ability wasn’t that good.  My mind literally zoned out of everything and focussed purely on understanding what she said.  I ended up saying something back in like a mix of Chinese, German and English.  It was kind of strange, but she understood what I wanted to say.  It was kind of random yet really fascinating to have a trilingual language conversation and tri-culture meal going on.