good talk

I'm so glad to be rid of those evil, old Readers, it was so horrible for me.  At the Taba border-crossing into Israel, the Egyptian officials gave me a hard-time, just to be mean.  Never before, had I run into this in Egypt either entering or leaving.  The one guy while looking through my bag purposely dropped my alabaster souvenirs, and when I protested, other Egyptian officials came over and gave me a bad-time.  One guy was going through my high blood-pressure medication, after a while I told him that I was an American Army Veteran and that I got this from the U.S. Government, and they all faded-away, but prior to this they were quite prickly.  And this is my complaint about the treatment of U.S. Citizens at the Taba crossing.  Once I was on the Israeli side, the Israelis, who usually are quite demanding of a tourist entering by himself, were real easy on me, this was unique.  All 5 times I've entered Israel differently.  I took a taxi to Eilat, hmm, 10 miles or so, a Mercedes, 30% of the Israeli taxis are this.  I was going to just go to Jerusalem, but the buses stopped running at 4 P.M. Friday due to the Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and wouldn't resume until 3 P.M. Saturday.  An Israeli lady and her son, knowing there'd be stranded passengers, so to speak, offered an apartment for the night, for 45 U.S. a night, not bad.  The son drove me to an ATM and then to the apartment, and it was pretty nice.  I must have an honest-face, it was pretty-loaded, I just left my key inside when I left.  But before then, the next morning about 7 A.M., I took the long-walk to the beach, and it was super-great for swimming, nice, calm, deep salt-water, it felt wonderful, Mmm, Yum, much better than Tel Aviv.  And if you want a spot on the sand for your blanket, at least in June, get there by 9 A.M.