Travelous

How do you define the soul of a city? For many travelers, it is in the dirt.

Atlanta ad exec Patrick Scullin, for example, likes to Baltimore, but not because it is particularly intact. "Yes, there is litter, smoking, and graffiti," he said, "but that's just life happening. The air offensive at times, but a cool breeze off the port can alleviate any concerns. It is a jewel of a city. "

While such sentiments do not appear in tourist brochures, which landed in the grain glorious Baltimore Top 10 dirtiest cities, as chosen by readers of leisure travel in the annual survey of America's favorite cities. Of course, visitors to gauge "dirty" in a variety of ways, litter, air pollution, even the taste of tap water.

This year American State Litter Scorecard, published by the advocacy group the American Society for Public Administration, put the two in Nevada and Louisiana in the bottom five echoes the assessment of TL readers who ranked Las Vegas and New Orleans among the dirtiest cities in America.

No. 1 New Orleans

Can you imagine cleaning required after Mardi Gras? Tourists and Mother Nature were sometimes hard on the Crescent City, who voted the dirtiest players in America. But that does not stop the good times roll on. Voters embraced fun-loving spirit of the city, ranking the first in New Orleans for its nightlife and eclectic people-watching.

No. 2 in Philadelphia

The City of Brotherly Love has been voted the dirtiest city fourth last year and just narrowly missed the top slot for sloppy this time. The people can not be helping with those first impressions, they ranked near the bottom of the style category, and in the bottom five to be environmentally conscious.

No. 3 in Los Angeles

This rep notorious for smog is hard to shake: the City of Angels, which is No. 3 for the second consecutive year, continues to do poorly in national air quality tests. AFC voters has also congested traffic in Los Angeles in last place to be user friendly for pedestrians and in the bottom three for the overall quality of life.

The difference for the passenger between a first visit and again is crucial. To "return" is not "go". Yet, old, familiar places to keep a kind of magic, and especially when memories are shared. For our 40th anniversary year of marriage, my wife, Elena, and I went back to where our marriage began: the South of France. We planned to visit old haunts, the area we once called home. Then we had all the time in the world, now we have a week. Too, there is a difference between 20-somethings living on a shoestring budget and tourists "a certain age" who stay in nice hotels.

"Let's do it right this time," I said. "Let's fly to Nice and to stay where we could not do before. Let's walk Down Memory Lane."

As newlyweds, honeymoon extended by one year, we had lived in the keeper's cottage in a beautiful old farm in Opio, near Grasse. The postman was coming on a scooter, spraying laces of the aisle, the cart was drawn by farm horses. When the mistral was blowing in the winter, the view from the heights of Cannes Corsica revealed the coal stove in the kitchen gave little hot water or heat. Opio now has a Club Med with a spa and a supermarket moved the butcher and baker, a golf course replaced the groves. And "our" property belongs to the Earl of Spencer, with locked doors and manicured lawns and pool.

It is difficult to know, in the wake of Heisenberg and Einstein, which is absolute, relative, and why. Should we change as witnesses, or is it that the change we are witnessing, or both does not change due to viewing, and it is our estimate altered by the awareness of view? Think of a railway and the train, the world goes through while we sit still, or is it vice versa? These problems of philosophy and mathematics are also riddles personal was it always like that, and we do not notice? Because we have changed more than the landscape, no matter how people complain that the landscape has changed.

"The young and the poor," said Elena. "Old and secure. That's us. "

Nice airport was expanded and modernized, but you do not exit in the market of flowers and tree-lined streets with cafes. Instead there is the "rush" of modernity, and we drove away from him, as if from any airport, not the one who clings to the border of the bright Mediterranean. Most of the old roads are clotted with cars, some have been reconfigured with the pace slows-roundabouts. It's like the memory, really: the sudden dips and stops and circles, with speed bumps that ply the streets. The village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence - sleepy and quiet the first time I saw it - has become a kind of Mecca for pilgrims and tour bus on foot. Fondation Maeght outside its walls contains the work of Braque, Chagall, Giacometti and other artists who made the home region. Bonnard, Matisse and Picasso lived in the area too, and many of them arrived in the south, at the invitation of Paul Roux, a hotelier who says, in effect, "Stay with me for the weekend and leave behind a painting or sculpture in exchange for a good meal and a bed. "

It was a brilliant arrangement, and the garden of La Colombe d'Or shows an installation by Fernand Leger, inside, there are drawings and paintings everywhere, with Alexander Calder enrolled in at least two "Mrs. . Roux "The artists are gone, the art remains. And somehow all viewing gets superimposed on a previous one, so that the garden is filled with ghosts. Now, standing before the abduction Light, I remember doing when was still a child and next to my mother. After his death, I found a travel journal she had kept on the trip: "Only in France you eat well," she writes, after lunch La Colombe d'Or.

We also ate there with my wife's parents on the eve of the first New Year of our marriage. Both of them were passing and offered us to host a drawing at a fixed price dinner party: many courses, much Champagne. The first of the dishes was locked woodcock sauce, and my mother-in-law - a devoted birder and member of the Audubon Society - has lost his appetite. We spent the night consoling her, assuring that the woodcock was handled gently and thoroughly cooked. Our own meals, some 40 years later, was a bit less dramatic, and we ate a basket of fresh vegetables and snails and rabbit blood sauce, but left the birds alone. I missed the chance at a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem (550 euros, or about $ 788 to 1.43 dollar per euro) for a cheap wine locally. ...

Which was what we used to drink in quantity, and often with the expatriate author James Baldwin. I met him briefly before, and serendipitously in line at American Express office in Cannes, and we became fast friends. It was the year Baldwin lived in self-imposed exile on La Route de la Colle, just below St. Paul de Vence. Across the road, above the place we parked to go into a property of Baldwin, I would see an advertisement for The Hamlet, inviting travelers in. But our own house was a dark disc, away and at midnight tipsily rear fascia past with the insouciance of youth, we never stayed in the hotel.

Now for the first two nights of our trip, The Hamlet was where we slept. The "Hamlet" buildings are beautifully landscaped, and the reception staff were friendly. Baldwin Home was abandoned, however, and it is now available: a pile of stones, where a melancholy time we laughed and talked. To see the tiles looted and the windows boarded up (although he died long ago, in 1987) was contemplating wreck and think Les Neiges d'Antan.

Building on the strong demand for travel in Europe and the Mediterranean this summer and fall, cruise lines move additional ships to the region in hopes of capitalizing on the heavy bookings. Then high fuel prices sent prices soaring, making a European cruise suddenly more expensive for Americans, and forcing cruise lines cut prices to fill ships.

Royal Caribbean, which sent half its fleet of 22 ships in Europe this season offers some of the cheapest rates. Hotwire.com recently listed a seven-night cruise from Venice Mediterranean on Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas in late June for as little as $ 499 per person for an inside cabin, about 30 percent of the normal price to the end of June

At the high end, Crystal Cruises has two-for-one rate of $ 7050 per person on summer cruises to Northern Europe. Its sale price fall of 10 trips from southern Europe shows the rate of $ 4,235 per person, a saving of up to $ 8,000.

"The rates on the 2011 summer cruises to Europe and the Mediterranean are the best we've ever seen," said Rich Tucker, manager of business development for CruiseDeals.com in Charlotte, but travelers must act quickly to grab a bargain. Already, he added, "we saw the price hit bottom and begin rebounding."

Indeed, some of the cheapest rates, including a seven-night sailing on Norwegian Cruise Line has been marked down to as low as $ 349 a person a few weeks ago, have already been snapped up. Celebrity Cruises has recently ended a "fly and sail" promotion it ran with reduced rates on airline tickets (from $ 999 per person) and 10 nights from $ 1199 Mediterranean cruises per person. Another result of the demand is shifting the decision to move to Royal Caribbean's 3,114 passenger ship, Navigator of the Seas, originally scheduled to sail in the Mediterranean this winter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he will sail in the Caribbean from November. As part of the switch, the line is the cancellation of a series of 14 night Mediterranean voyages will be held in Barcelona between November and April.

But there are still many bargains. Recent research on the cruise business Cayole.com site turned up six nights Eastern Mediterranean cruise with Royal Caribbean in July from $ 549 per person (originally $ 1.519), and a seven-night cruise Mediterranean on the Norwegian Cruise Line in June from $ 749 per person for a balcony room (originally $ 1,799).

Even without the discounts, all-inclusive nature of cruising - with the ship to provide meals, lodging and transportation between cities - can offer savings and relief of the complications of assembling a complex route of Europe, which normally involves intra-booking rates in Europe, train tickets and hotels.

The biggest obstacle facing the negotiation-cruisers is to find reasonable airfare discounts to go with last-minute cruise. The average rate was lowest in round-trip from New York to five European cities is $ 1,198, up about 8 percent of $ 1,105 for the same period last year, according to Travel Bing.

To bring the fares down, consider sailing in late August, when rates are often lower, recommended Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor of CruiseCritic.com, which tracks the industry. If you are flexible on dates, you can also consider cashing in your frequent flier miles.

"Whatever you do," she says, "not to succumb to the temptation to Europe without a fantastic deal to make sure you can get affordable air in advance."

To help negate the high cost of airline tickets and keep the travel booking, some packaging lines are also in their ticket deals. Last month, put Oceania Cruises 18 cruises on sale, including eight Mediterranean voyages from September to November from $ 1,999 per person, including round trip coach - over 60 percent off brochure prices.

And the line luxury Regent Seven Seas Cruises offers round-trip ticket in business class for $ 999 per person per trip and reduced rates of $ 10,000 per couple for several European departures. This brings the cost of a 12-night sailing from Istanbul to Athens, for example, $ 5,999 per person, 40 percent less than similar cruise last year.

Other cruise lines are cutting rates so low that the savings will help balance the high cost of the plane to Europe. Holland America Line has completed a sale of European cruise with rates of $ 599 per person on seven-night departures to Scandinavia, $ 699 per person on cruises that visit Italy and Côte d'Azur and $ 899 in other parts of the Mediterranean.

One way to reduce the cost of your cruise vacation is to work with an experienced travel agent can find the best deal for you. Cruises are always one of the few categories in which travel agents have an advantage over DIY online booking.

Even better is to combine your own research with the expertise of an agent. CruiseCompete.com, for example, allows you to select the cruise you want to take, and independent travel agents to offer you the best deal. You compare offers from your account, contact the agent with the best rates by phone or e-mail for reservations.

A gentle summer rain dotted the lake surface. As I toweled my Speedo racerback after a cold swim, I spotted a building occupied nests of muskrats under the willows. As campsites go, this clearing 30 miles north of Quebec City in the foothills of the Laurentians offers tranquility. Except it was not backcountry destination - it was a spa with a wild streak.

Zonespa, the site of the gentle rain, is one of the many spas in Canada who take the ritual Scandinavian sauna as a source of inspiration, but expand it to include water therapies such as whirlpool hot waterfalls and reinforcements piping steam baths, placing them all in the middle of the woods to the north. Exploit the natural resources of Canada, Nordic spas use rivers, ponds and lakes as additional therapy pools. The rustic theme covers services: manicure offers none, and the massages tend to be simple Swedish variety.

But in this organic theme is the change, as I discovered last summer on a stay of four days exploring the lakes and rivers in Quebec, the province most closely associated with so-called Nordic spas. Four spas that opened since 2005 are just 20 to 60 miles from Quebec City and near national parks and the creation of an ideal tour for those looking to commune with nature on the trails and recover from this communion backcountry.

My first stop along this path was sybaritic Siberia Station Spa, a haven of peace at only 17 miles from Quebec Airport, near the resort area of ​​Lake Beauport. Like other outdoor spas in the region, Siberia Station offered immersion in nature, with a series of whirlpools on several terraces on the steep bank of the Yellow River. Unlike many of them, it has features that could convince a honeymoon to waive the Catskills to Canada. Jacuzzis seems designed for two, and couples waiting their turn. Some have done cuddling and forth, hammocks rainbow stripes stretched between the pines, in a cabin warming shaped capsule with a flat screen television flashing images of serene beaches, or wrapped in robes in front of a fire outdoors.

As requested by the signs in French, I began to explore the facilities in the steam chamber strongly scented with eucalyptus, followed by a cold shower under a waterfall and a false quiet swing in a hammock rocked by a trill is the red-winged blackbird. The recommended steps - hot, cold, rest, repeat - have been bracing, but after a few laps after knocking my meaning was not only enjoyable, it was numb in a way that has become an addiction.

Indulging in spas series is often not financially realistic. But Nordic spas are relatively inexpensive, access generally runs 25 to 37 Canadian dollars (about the same in U.S. dollars), with extra massage. In granting this need and they are two different things, of course. The next morning I made for my laziness with an invigorating walk through a country moose in Jacques-Cartier National Park, drive north a half-hour of Lac Beauport.

A few short miles south of the park, the river passes Jacques-Cartier The Nordic spa, which evokes a summer camp, including the use of the river as a pool of cold water. Dotted in lupine and daisies with sunny, flagstone terraces and artificial waterfalls, ownership hill felt more favorable to individuals and couples than platonic Siberia Station.

A mother and daughter out of the river has assured me the cold immersion was "Okay!" After I took my own icy plunge almost breathtaking, I realized they had served it "breathtaking, but it is exhilarating to survive." In the sauna near a blast of hot air had a similar shock that I got a bench in front of another guest Read a novel by a naturally lighted window wood interior spacious.

The most successful Nordic channels Scouting in its shoreline wood platform tents that serve as display face treatment rooms of the season, which I mentioned to a Swedish massage. A soundtrack of chirping, whistling and chirping birds accompanied the treatment my therapist kneaded my backpack-shaped nodes.

I repeated the routine the next day exercise in the morning canoeing and trail running at Station touristique Duchesnay, a resort in the province managed about 25 miles northwest of Quebec City.

Then, with enough muscle past, I introduced myself to one of the chief of park amenities, Tyst Trädgård. This four-year Nordic spa housed in a series of cottages order twinkling on the shore of Lake St. Joseph offers a private spa experience and more pampered than the others, invited individual time slotting in its outdoor pools, saunas and plunge.

After meeting in the locker room, an attendant led me outside to my garden hydrotherapy. She returned periodically during the hour before my massage to the rhythm of my trip to the sauna jacuzzi, regulation of time spent in each and to make me look a butterfly Longwing hum of flowers near the pool, two peaks typing a premium maple and a snail enjoying the cold fog of artificial waterfall shared.

"Being in nature and beauty, fresh air is part of the therapy," said Genevieve Monette, owner of Tyst Trädgård, which means "quiet garden" in Swedish.

To quench my end, I went to the eastern city of Quebec Zonespa, a few miles beyond the ski resort of Mont Sainte-Anne, where I made a symbolic walk before it starts raining. But a little thread is not enough to spoil the Nordic spa experience. "We are open all the time," said the official control of me in the spa contemporary, window-wrapped offering the most ambitious treatment program in her class, and felt well, at least inside, as sophisticated urban spa. However, the water remained the priority, with a wooden dock on a private lake serving swimmers and wildlife watchers.

The spa can be weatherproof. Not, apparently, spa-goers, there were only five in the morning rain, I spent there, alternating between the steam room and sauna and indoor hot tubs outdoors, and icy cold Cascade The lake chin deep. The gentle but steady rain convinced me that I did not need plumbing to assess the effects of thermal water, and I spent my downtime recommended sitting on the dock, watching the trout area, the parade of ducks, swallows skimming the lake, and a muskrat very diligent - a bit like camp, but much cleaner.

WHERE TO SOAK

The Nordic (747, Jacques-Cartier Nord, Stoneham-Tewkesbury; 418-848-7727; lenordique.com), 32 Canadian dollars, unchanged in U.S. dollars, for hydrotherapy unlimited, $ 99, including massage 60 minutes.

Siberia Station Spa (339, boulevard du Lac, Lac-Beauport, 418-841-1325; siberiastationspa.com), $ 37 for hydrotherapy unlimited $ 99 an hour massage.

Tyst Trädgård (35, way to relax, Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier 418-875-1645; tysttradgard.com), $ 25 for one hour of therapy, $ 91 more with a massage.

Zonespa (186, rang St-Julien, St-Ferreol-les-Neiges, 418-826-1772; zonespa.com), $ 37 for three hours of hydrotherapy, massage 60 minutes from $ 99

We asked where they came from an off-handed way, my companion and I were not particularly worried. But, coming-conscious, environmentally listening to Seattle, such a question can too easily be construed as a challenge, a challenge: to ensure that these molluscs are not the inhabitants of some distant seabed, moved by a lavish expenditure of fossil fuels. Prove to us that these are the bivalves' hood.

And his inability to do so could be considered delinquent, a maximum penalty of six months of hard work in a community garden.

"They are definitely local," she stammered, shaking his head hard.

"From here," she added, lest we misunderstand the concept of space.

She rushed to meet with another server, then returned with triumphant confirmation: "Lopez Island" is one of the San Juan Islands, just 80 miles from Seattle or neighborhood in which this restaurant, and walrus the carpenter, made his home brackish. And San Juan is the seafood that is Bravo housewives called: a seemingly endless treasure of specimens without equal. Clams in question - the clams, to be exact, that the restaurant had been deployed in a sublime tartare - are only one example. They nominally promise of sweetness, followed by means of a gentle and haunting.

To eat in and around Seattle, I've done recently, and strongly recommends not only eat well. It is to experience something even larger, more famous gastronomic cities and regions can not offer, not at this point: a deep and exhilarating sense of space.

I'm struggling to think of another area or patch of the United States, where the sensitivities of the moment locavore is these magnificent (and often gently funny) display, or if they pay rich dividends, at least if you're a Amateur fish. You could, I believe, make a case for the southern portion of the Pacific Northwest around Portland, Oregon, a city honored by his own cable television show, "Portlandia," which mocks his obsessions artisanal, gourmet and otherwise . But Portland is not as connected and intimate with the sea and the tides of Seattle. It's not as wonderfully watery.

In addition to Seattle and San Juan Islands you get quality programming and local oysters that are not easily matched, and more beautiful place shrimp, salmon, cod and halibut.

Did I mention the Dungeness crab? The area is lousy with Dungeness crab. He came to me more than I could keep track. Seatown at a restaurant near the attractive new Pike Place Market, he formed a layer of snow in a colorful, carefully molded puck with avocado, pale green and bright orange tobiko, which is flying fish roe. Seatown still have used it with bacon in a BLT unconventional For its part, the Madison Park Conservatory restaurant, a recent arrival on the shores of Lake Washington, served eggs stuffed with Dungeness crab brunch. Somewhere around Seattle, I am sure, Dungeness crab gelato is made. I just did not have good (or bad?) Fortune to find it.

The region offers a natural theater for the festival that is just as inimitable, fascinating topography of rolling hills and steep mountain slope. Snowcaps shimmering in the distance. Evergreens are everywhere - and Piney gargantuan and very, very sharp. The treeline has notched edges. It seems as if it is indented.

The region also has a spirit all its own, which HEWS fetchingly some progressive, outdoor shots, people show a penchant for bikes, beards, tattoos, flannel and sweaters of all time which is far outside the statistical norm. For humanitarian causes, too. Nowhere have I received a bill from the hotel which includes a donation of $ 3 charity.

"Uh, what exactly it for?" I asked the clerk to control myself in my room.

"It changes, but for now is to rescue the Japanese," she said. "You do not have to pay. You may go." With three times that amount in fees minibar, I do not see how that was possible. No, if I wanted to slink out of my rental car - which I suddenly realized, was not the Prius or other hybrid - with even thinner piece of dignity.

My trip came a little early in the year, in late April and early May, when the rain had not let go and the cold persisted. But in June, July, August: it was then that the Northwest Pacific is the most glorious. The clouds dissipate and the sun shines a lot, but the temperature does not rise high oppressive.

I know from previous visits to the region, and on the basis of these trips, I can also say that his progress culinary end seems particularly long and fleet. A measure of this progress is the transformation of the Willows Inn, a lodge long on Lummi Island, which recently became the subject of considerable gossip among (and pilgrimages by) the restaurant-goers.

Lummi Island, a hilly, green, narrow finger of land that is only 10 miles long, is another of San Juan, and is not particularly trammeled or implemented important for tourism - the at least not yet. After a road trip about two hours of Seattle, a sign that I faced when a ferry deposited me and my car, he said clearly. He attached the population to 816.

CASBAH-lined streets LIKE stone houses wrapped up towards the hills wrapped in pine and cypress. handpainted signs beckoned visitors with shops and studios, jewelers, potters and other artisans. Just after a popular brunch spot with a patio packed, Christian pilgrims from Russia, Poland and the United States gathered around a spring where Mary and Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, would have met.

Nestled in the arid hills on the western edge of Jerusalem, the community of Ein Karem was teeming with tourists and residents on an afternoon in March. It was hard to remember that it was a Saturday, at the height of the Sabbath, and the rest of Jewish Jerusalem stopped dead in its tracks.

As bureau chief of Newsweek, I lived in Jerusalem from 2000 to 2004 and remember very well how the entire West - Jewish - side of town stopped at the start of the Sabbath. At 15 pm on Friday, the streets emptied of traffic, shopping areas cleared out, and silent contemplation aside the tensions of this unrest, a city with a majority of the working class - severe tensions at the time by the Intifada al Aqsa. I ended up enjoying the silence of the Sabbath, even if there was Saturday, when I longed to escape religious aura of the city and relax in an atmosphere secular. Often, this means exploring some enclaves few minutes drive from downtown Jerusalem, where Israelis are non-believers to sip a cappuccino, a magazine of art and antiques, picnic, hiking in the hills and other forget that they live in one of the holiest cities in the world.

I recently reconnected with three locations: the Arab-Israeli town of Abu Ghosh, the secular Jewish artists 'colony' of Ein Karem, and hiking in Ein Sataf in Jerusalem forest. It is easy to combine a visit to three places in one morning and afternoon, back to the center of Jerusalem at dusk. All are reminders that offers much more than Jerusalem's Old City, Temple Mount and other sites of biblical resonance, for those who know, there are wonderful darkest corners of this color gives the character and history - not to mention great food.

A good place to start is to Abu Ghosh, a village of minarets, packed-together houses Ottoman and Middle Eastern restaurants, which is located seven miles west of Jerusalem, near Tel Aviv highway Jerusalem. The Muslim city has maintained close ties with Jews in Israel, arriving here en masse for weekend brunch, especially in spring and summer.

Abu Ghosh has a turbulent history. Although inhabited since Neolithic times, it was officially created in 1520 by the clan of Abu Ghosh, landowners of Circassian origin, who received a lucrative franchise of the Ottoman Sultan to collect taxes from travelers on the pilgrimage route Christian between Jaffa and Jerusalem. During the British Mandate period, Abu Ghosh majority Muslim population had good relations with Jews, Abu Ghosh has remained at the 1948 war, when Arab gunmen used the surrounding hills to ambush convoys of supplies Jerusalem under siege. Nevertheless, Israel detained many of its inhabitants after the war at the same time, the Jordanian authorities denounced Abu Ghosh residents as traitors. Today the city is one of the only surviving Muslim villages in the region.

A friend from Berlin and I arrived late Saturday morning, just before the invasion of Jerusalem a week hunger. After entering the village, next to a group of Arab men selling pomegranate juice, is one of the most impressive remains of the Crusades, the Crusaders' Church of the Resurrection, built the 12th century. "More than any other well-preserved ancient church in Palestine" is how the mid-19th century travel writer Edward Robinson describes this beautiful Gothic structure in Jerusalem stone, which sits in a lush garden of palm-ended date palms, scattered Corinthian columns and a fountain murmurs. Just next door is a Benedictine abbey. The church was closed to visitors on Saturday morning, but we talked our way into the garden, admiring the view of the forest surrounding until we were chased by the priest impatient.

At noon, we headed for one of the venues most popular name blandly Lebanese Restaurant (88 rue Hashalom; 972-2-533-5561). With friends Tel Aviv, we sat at a table in a shaded courtyard dominated by blackberries and, for 30 shekels, about $ 9 at 3.4 shekels to the dollar, celebrated the pita bread, pickles, falafel and hummus, all washed down with fresh lemonade and being chased by an Arabic coffee. Gradually the site filled with Jewish families in Israel. By now the main thoroughfare in front of the Lebanese Restaurant was bumper to bumper cars, almost all destined for one of a dozen popular restaurants here.

the culinary reputation of Abu Ghosh has crossed the borders of Israel: In January 2010, Jawdat Ibrahim, the restaurant owner Abu Ghosh (65, Hashalom Street, 972-2-533-2019) has been devoted, briefly, in the Book Guinness World Records for making the biggest plate of hummus ever - 8992 pounds of it. Alas, Ibrahim record fell just four months later - at a restaurant in a village east of Beirut, Lebanon.

We left with full stomachs, and 10 minutes later, cut to the Jewish community of Mevaseret Zion, and followed the winding roads through the forest from Jerusalem to Ein Karem. Located in a groove and dominated by a gold-domed Orthodox church Russian perched on a hill, Ein Karem, now incorporated into Jerusalem's municipal, is considered by many Christians to be the birthplace of John the Baptist.

During the 1948 war, 300 Arab guerrillas in Ein Karem, with the support of Iraqi troops, Syrian and Egyptian Jews fought against the soldiers and ambushed convoys on the road from Tel Aviv-Jerusalem. After the massacre in April 1948, the Jewish paramilitary forces of 120 Arab civilians in the nearby village of Deir Yassin, Ein Karem was evacuated and resettled by the Israelis. Muslims are all gone now, and as I walked around the village, one of the few to survive the 1948 war with most of its buildings intact, I was quite aware of the controversial past and Ein Karem could not help noticing that there was no mention - in tourist guides or signs historic sites - Arab evacuations.