Day 2 in Israel/Palestine, 6 January 2026

I'm here in Jerusalem. Flight felt oddly shorter than 11 hours. It was an overnight flight, as most of them seem to be, and I’m so sleepy. I’m staying tonight in a hotel not far from Ofer's house, just for tonight and then tomorrow I move into an Airbnb studio that I’ll have for the rest of my time here. My flight landed at 7 AM Israel time and it’s 12:14 PM now and my room should be ready soon. I am so so so sleepy.

I used Google maps to find a place to have some lunch near the hotel and it turned out to be this restaurant that Yehuda really loved and took me to several times. That was a nice surprise and bittersweet.

Today I had green shakshuka, which turned out to be sort of almost like a creamed spinach with some zucchini in it. And of course the eggs. It was delicious. And there were two different kinds of sort of whipped cheese and good bread and Israeli salad, which I think is really Palestinian salad. And I had sort of a frozen lemonade with mint, which was delicious.

Also, if you will recall from my previous trips here, there’s lots of stray cats in Israel, especially Jerusalem, but really all over. Here are my first three cat sightings of this trip.

I can’t wait for my room to be ready so I can go to sleep for a couple of hours. There’s a nice courtyard at this small hotel and it’s beautiful weather like 62° and not humid at all. 

I’m excited to be here. 

Later: Now I'm in my room and so excited to sleep for a while.