Journey to hell
Locals say that to visit the Dead Sea is to visit "hell". And all because it is the lowest point on Earth - 450 meters below sea level. However, I am not against such a "hell"
Boryspil highway, airport, registration, a cup of coffee, 3 hours of flight and here it is, the Promised Land! It remains a bit - to go through 2 security points, with all the explanations: “where”, “to whom”, “why” and “where did the Egyptian visa come from, do you have relatives there” ? ? ? ! The last question for citizens of Russia and Ukraine can not be asked, every second visa has at least 2! Despite the inconvenience, such security measures are quite logical - Israel is in a constant paramilitary state with Palestine, while remaining one of the safest countries in the world - in Israel, the life and health of an individual citizen and tourist is above all!
40 minutes of control and security, and here it is - the long-awaited first breath of warm, thick Israeli air ...In each country, the air smells in its own way ...here it smells of antiquity ...
Having passed Tel Aviv, I immediately rushed to the Dead Sea, I really wanted to get there quickly and go to the SPA ...The ride was nothing - 2.5 hours, but during this time we drove half the country. From the car window you can see the Palestinian territories, you can hear the sound of the minaret, and the closer to the Dead Sea, the more often there are Bedouin settlements ...A small digression: what is especially surprising in Israel is coexistence: a neighbor with whom you are constantly at war, advanced military technologies, the best medicine in the world, the newest routes and settlements of the Bedouins who live according to their own laws of a thousand years ago ...
And so, the Bedouin settlements are a kind of slum camps located along the highway.
They say that inside these are not slums, but luxurious palaces - a fairly relative comparison, and you can’t even tell from the outside. But there are definitely toilets and showers, huge satellite dishes on the roofs (some of them look rather uncertainly above the sagging roof). The Bedouins, as well as other nationalities, are characterized by a social division into rich and poor. Rich Bedouins no longer ride camels, they got cars - as a rule, this is an old Mercedes, from the 80s that way, with an obligatory layer of dust, or a well-worn SUV that has long been asking for a service station.
Bedouin settlements stretch all the way to the Judean Desert. The desert is worthy of individual words, one can talk about it for a long time and with admiration.
It fascinates with its grandeur, silence, tranquility ...This is not a sandy plain, no, quite the contrary - the Judean Desert is a desert of hills, only these hills have never seen greenery, they are sandy-brick in color with completely absent vegetation. It is through the desert that the road leads to the Dead Sea. Half an hour on a mountain road and the Sea at your feet! More precisely, not quite yours anymore ...after the constant pumping of minerals and mud for the production of cosmetic products, the sea was very crushed and the water level drops by 1 meter every year. The governments of Israel and Jordan have adopted a common program to regulate the water level in the Dead Sea and prevent its drying up, now water is pumped into it from the basins of the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
Arriving at the hotel, the first thing I thought was “I can’t settle down today. ” It seems that all of Israel is in Daniel.
I was told that Daniel is popular among the local elite, but so much so! I did not hear Russian speech for the first 30 minutes, which is also surprising, Israel is a fairly Russian-speaking country, you can imagine how many compatriots immigrated at one time. And of course, as usual in Israel - three-star service in a five-star hotel! I don’t know, maybe this only happens to me, but how many times I have been here, no matter what hotels I stay in, there is always something wrong, then the room is given a category lower than what I booked, then with a view ( and sound) to the construction site, this time they did not wait for me at 16.00, despite the fact that the check-in was from 14.00 and in the morning I managed to call them in advance and warn them that I would be on time! ! !
After 15 minutes of searching for my room on the computer and talking in Hebrew, I was offered to check into one room today and move to another tomorrow (rooms of the same category with the same view, but on different floors). When I asked if I could stay in the one I would check in today, they answered that - no, since this is not “my” room, but the one that is mine, respectively, is occupied, but will definitely be free by my move (that is, tomorrow)! They probably thought I would agree. Yeah, of course, this is after I have been lugging around with my suitcase since 8 in the morning, and I keep dreaming about how I will arrive, decompose and forget about its existence for the next 5 days! I had to say bluntly that I can’t collect and disassemble my suitcases with such regularity. I must admit that 5 * still work ...even in Israel.
After talking to each other in Hebrew again, I was offered to wait until 19:00, I was offered to wait not in the lobby, but in the SPA, taking a choice of any procedure lasting up to 40 minutes. This option suited me perfectly, given that I was going to SPA immediately upon arrival.
Having chosen the procedure, having received a bathrobe and slippers, I went to the locker room ...more precisely, to the toilet-shower, from the “locker room” there is only a bench and hooks on which you can hang clothes. And that's not bad, the main thing - there is a shower. Washing off all the fatigue, and leaving things in the locker, I went to the hot mud wrapping procedure. My first encounter with mud was scalding! The second thing happened right away - after my “hot” in Russian, my massage therapist decided to switch from his ideal British to a very worthy Russian (later it turned out that Khaem speaks not only Russian! ). So I got a permanent masseur-polyglot, who, most importantly, was a worthy specialist!
And so, DIRT ...Hot, dense, enveloping, which smells ...of dirt, but somehow especially pleasant, something woody and mineral ...I never thought that you can get such pleasure by rolling in the mud! In all Danielevsky SPA I was pleasantly struck by two facts: Dirt (an absolutely independent phenomenon) and the fact that Chaim knows 7 languages. But in general - such an Israeli SPA: dirty, dark (this is so that the first was not visible) and with a sulfur-hydrogen pool full of people, but despite the "-" it is worth noting a couple of "+": experienced staff and worthy service.
Since we touched on the topic of hotels, I would like to share. In view of the restlessness of my nature, I could not live in the same hotel, and even for several evenings in a row, and of all the evening entertainment available, only one was to eat and see the “new place”, so it was decided to dine every time in a new restaurant.
And, as you know, there are already 2 or 3 separate restaurants on the Dead Sea, all the rest are in hotels. Therefore, I can and want to share my “hotel” impressions:
Daniel 5 * - I have already managed to partially describe, but there is a lot to say, so I will continue: a new, not yet dilapidated hotel, with normal-sized rooms and, in my case, with a huge terrace. There are terraces in almost all rooms, and the view cannot be bad - on the one hand the sea, on the other - the mountains. Purity. The cleanliness of an Israeli hotel is when everything seems to be cleaned, but somehow not completely. Here it is the same. For example, glass surfaces never sparkle and are not perfectly clean - there are always prints of past guests on them, bathroom taps - in drops and smudges from water a year ago, and I understand that they have not been rubbed at least for a long time, at most - never - Yes!
But everything is in order with their service: courteous, polite, always happy to help (even when you fool them with booking and subsequent cancellation of excursions, taxis, etc. ), they are very protective of the well-being of their guests. I was “lucky” to get poisoned, on this occasion a local doctor was called, and then with the aim of taking stomach pills from him (by the way, this is the only opportunity to buy medicine in the Dead Sea, given that there is not a single pharmacy and medical center permanently closed). So, besides the fact that they called him to me and checked the presence, they called again 5 times in the evening and asked if everything was all right with me and if I didn’t need anything. The only thing that struck me unpleasantly in the service of Daniel and ISROTEL (perhaps the same system in other hotels - I don’t know) is that you can’t eat at any time! The hotel claims room service 24 hours a day and, in fact, it also receives its 5 *, but from 10.00 to 13.00.
00 you will not be served anything even in your room, not to mention restaurants. IZROTEL honestly admitted to us - “the chef left”, why did he leave? Where? Nonsense! Since we touched on the cuisine, let's continue: Daniel has a delicious kosher restaurant, they don't serve meat, only fish and cheese. The inner hall is beautiful and large, with a stage and a nightly program, the summer terrace is the opposite: empty, inanimate, poorly furnished, in a word - dine inside. What surprised me the most was the Shabbat elevator! I don't know how I could have missed it on previous trips! Every hotel and house has an elevator that lives its own life on Saturdays - the buttons are turned off in it and it stops on each floor, this is due to the fact that you can’t work on Holy Saturday, and pressing buttons is also work!
)) Outdoor swimming pool - huge with comfortable sun loungers, open bar; at noon they open a "fruit bar", where you can order fresh juices or fruits of your choice - and they will definitely clean and cut them for you. I told a lot and in detail about the SPA, the only thing worth adding: Daniel's SPA, to be honest, loses to ISROTEL both in the number of pools with hydrogen sulfide (there are 4 in ISROTHEL), and in cleanliness, I can’t say anything about the quality of procedures - I can’t happened.
ISROTEL 5 * - "a hotel in which a number is always assigned to Berezovsky", this is the first thing I learned about the hotel (by the way, not the fact that it's true), accidentally sitting in the lobby. This hotel turned out to be my neighbor, so I had dinner here, explored the SPA and even took a dip in the cold pool once (+17), by the way, I didn’t notice another one ...it’s not very nice if this one is the only one.
ISROTEL can rightly be called a Russian hotel on the Dead Sea - here you can hear mainly Russian speech and the main part of the vacationers - our compatriots. You can understand the love of our people for the hotel: a good SPA complex, clean enough, a private beach (the sea is across the road), two restaurants (one is kosher, the other is meat), a cozy terrace with soft sofas (in contrast to others, it even seems beautiful) ! I don’t know what’s going on in the rooms, I didn’t get there. And in general - quite positively. Finally: The hotel is very popular not only among Russians, but also among local Arab taxi drivers, who are happy to take on excursions and in every way entertain Slavic young ladies who arrived without their husbands
Hotel LOT 3 * stands right on the shores of the Dead Sea! This is perhaps its only merit.
I didn’t see the rooms, but everything else is at the level of the Crimea: dirty, poor, the restaurant does not have the indicated drinks, the pool is a splash pool (there are too many people in such a small pool).
CrownPlaza 5 * - a neighbor of LOT, with access to the sea and its own beach, obviously once shone. Mostly Russians here, many children - they are the only ones who create at least some movement in the hotel. Very boring, no program, empty at 10 pm. Strange cuisine, instead of grilled salmon they bring smoked salmon, edible, even tasty, but somehow unexpected ...With all this, excellent service: friendly staff, fast service, excellent reception work.
There are other hotels on the Dead Sea, but I didn’t get to them ...I decided to take a walk around the town. “Walking” in this case is, of course, loud, but you can walk ...
for example, to the Petra shopping center (this building still doesn’t pull at the shopping center, but it’s not America either - they don’t suffer from gigantomania): a two-story building with a total area of .500-600 meters, McDonalds and Aroma on the first floor, small shops on the second. It’s kind of dubious, it’s better to go to the embankment - here is the second Dead Sea shopping center (I don’t know its name, and no one seems to know, “moll”), it’s somehow livelier here: a fresh bar, a local minimarket , shops with local cosmetics, beachwear, etc. Here is my favorite restaurant - TapuahSdom. Why I love it - I don’t know, maybe because I had dinner in it on the first evening, or because the food is sooo tasty, and the service is fast, or maybe the beggar cat liked it! The cat story of Israel is worthy of a separate article, but in a nutshell: Israel is a country of cats!
They are loved here, pampered, fed, and if they suddenly didn’t feed them, they themselves: they will come to the restaurant, ask / or even demand, and the most pleasant thing is that they don’t “hush”, they don’t “splash”, they don’t drive them! Well, let's go back to my table, dinner passed with the cat, he climbed through the window, which scared me a lot, after eating, he also left without permission . The restaurant is pleasant. Precisely pleasant, I didn't say good or luxurious, and don't forget that you are in Israel. Two small halls, a rich selection of Israeli wine, Russian-speaking hospitable staff, the owner is also Russian, what was his name ....Dima or Oleg - no, I don't remember.
Somehow time flew by so quickly, there were so many days, we didn’t even know what to fill them with, and now it’s time to leave tomorrow morning ...
Yana Shabatina
