Welcome to Eilat

Yes, there is a cybercafe in Eilat, but loyal readers will remember that we tried to use it once and the connection is horrible. In fact, there are at least three places in Eilat to get email and connect to the web, but BJ's Books is the cheapest and, ironically, fastest. The owner, Jeff Gross, claims he has an ISDN line, but it was awfully slow. Moreover, when we get our Petra page up and loaded, you will read about yet another irony--but I'll save that for later.

Akiva Ilan, our host in Jerusalem, was kind enough to make reservations for us at the King Solomon's Palace Hotel in Eilat, and the three photos below are from our balcony (the first, of course, is a night view).

(We even saw a postcard of Eilat with almost exactly this view!)

On our first day in Eilat, we went to Coral Beach to go snorkeling. We took an underwater camera with us but haven't yet had those pics developed, so no "snorkel-cam" photos, as Adam would call them. After we sunned and snorkeled and snacked, however, we did get out the digital-cam and took these photos, first of Adam on the beach...

...and then a shot of the beach itself.

Another photo, of windsurfers (a moment later a gust of wind knocked both of them over).

And a photo of Monica contemplating the beach.

That afternoon, as we walked to BJ's Books, we passed by a shopping mall outside of which were two huge mounds of...snow! I had to get a photo of the Eilati (and tourist) kids playing in it and throwing snowballs (even though I did take the risk that someone would throw one at me or--worse--the camera); I thought my mom and Mama (her mom) would appreciate it. (Being from California, my earliest recollections of snow were quite similar.)

Here's a pic of me (waiting and waiting) online at BJ's Books.

On our way back, we took one friend's email recommendation and got fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, courtesy of this lovely fruit juice vendor, Agar. Both she and the juice were highly memorable. She commented, when I asked if I could get her photo, "So now you will remember me?" And Adam later said to me, "Yes, and so will potentially hundreds of other people!" (The juice was memorable in that it tasted like a cross between raw rhubarb and kiwi, with a strong vegetable-like quality that is hard to describe. Maybe it just wasn't in season, but we'll never know, for it will be many moons before we try it again!)

One thing we didn't try, but which struck us as odd, was fresh-grilled corn on the cob. Several vendor stands proliferated on the Eilat boardwalk, as well as elsewhere in Israel (we first noticed them in Tel Aviv, but thought it was a fluke). This particular stand sold corn in "spicy curry Indian style with mayonnaise" and "Thai flavor."

Eilat, Day 2: Coral World

On our second day in Eilat, we initially planned to parasail, but it was a bit too cold, so we headed to Coral World, which Adam remembered as the Undersea Observatory when he was in Eilat 20 years ago. As with many aspects of Eilat, that too had changed. I will let him explain how the city is different, below, after the following Coral World photos. In the meantime, enjoy our virtual aquarium.

Below is a photo of Adam listening to a personal audio guide, which explained a great deal about the coral reef and its inhabitants. In the background is the undersea observatory.

Here is a picture of Adam observing the fish.

And here is a photo of us after we viewed the fish from the observatory.

And now, the virtual aquarium:

left: doublebar bream; right: antenna butterfly fish.

left: emperor angelfish (juvenile); right: green turtle (adult).

left: sergeant major; right: soft coral.

left: school of sergeant major fish; right: another doublebar bream.

left: emperor angelfish by bubblegum coral; right: female scalefin anthias by disc coral.

left: two unknown fish (we forgot to write it down); right: picasso triggerfish and sohal surgeonfish.

left: growing bits of coral with cube trunkfish in foreground; right: brain coral and lunar fusilier fish.

Adam writes:

Eilat has changed a lot (get it? get it? groan, groan) since I was last here 20 years ago with my parents and grandparents. First, the white undersea observatory in the picture above was the whole of the observatory experience back then. There was a plank with a guy selling tickets and that was it. No explanations, no tanks of fish from other parts of the Red Sea or Mediterranean, no gift shop, no amusement park ride (yes, there was a moving-chair movie we suffered through).

The park now covers several acres, and equipment pumps seawater in and out of the tanks fast enough to replace the water entirely every five hours or so. There are outside and inside tanks. The park also gave us a digital phone-type device into which we could punch a three-number code to hear about different types of fish or ecological systems. Highly cool.

Across from the Observatory is now a fairly sizable hotel. When I was last here, it was a sandy lot in which we met a Bedouin who gave my sister, Ruth, and me one-minute camel rides. This time, we had to wait until we got to Petra to ride the camels. But that's on a different page.

Now, rather than a bedouin, Eilat has a place called "Texas Ranch" that apparently offers half-day and full-day camel rides. We are so incredibly sore from our ten-minute ride (described on the Petra page) that neither of us can imagine what the trip would have been like had we taken the long, painful camel trip.

Monica writes again:

After Coral World, we headed back to the hotel and stopped at that most kosher of ice cream stands, Ben & Jerry's. Below is a picture of Monica enjoying a cup, and another picture of the (Hebrew) list of phenomenal flavors.

The next day we headed out early to go to Petra, Jordan. Click here to see our account of that adventure.

Or, click below to see what we did in the following places ...

Last updated March 28, 1999.