The Nova Festival Victims Memorial

Let's begin by the place: the Nova Festival Victims Memorial, or the Noval Massacre Site, is the place at the South of Israel where the Nova Music Festival was happening on October 6th-7th, 2023 when Hamas and Gaza people invaded Israel, killing everyone they found on their way. 378 people that were there for dancing to the music were killed at the site, 44 people abducted or taken hostages, others managed to flee the place and either arrived safely home or were killed on their way or while hiding at the bomb shelters.

The place, situated at the Re'im Recreation Parking Lot in the western Negev desert, near road 232, has become a memorial site for the people killed there. There is a field with pictures of all the people that died there, and lately a forest was planted there in honor of these victims.

On January 7th, 2026, Shmil and myself decided to fight the boredom of retirement with a no-reason roam of the Golan Heights to see some green nature and water.

It is worth reminding that January is one of the coldest months of the Israeli winter. However, the 2025-6 winter has been not specially broad in rains. Our first intention was to visit some waterfalls, but it was enough to visit one of them to understand that there is not enough water in the region.

We took the most direct route to the Golan Heights: travelling through Yoqneam, the Golani junction, and the road to Kiryat Shmone, and then to our first stop, Sa'ar Waterfall. 

The air was a little dusty, but it was enjoyable anyway.

As I already told, our arrival to Sa'ar Waterfall showed us a dry waterfall, with a little water flowing in the stream below. Nothing really special. Frustrated, we decided to give up on the following waterfalls, and go to Mount Hermon to see the situation of the snow there.

Mount Hermon is the highest mountain in Israel, with 2,236 meters (7,335 feet) altitude. The Syrian side of the Hermon is higher, but Israelis have no access to there.

The way to Mount Hermon is the beautiful Road 989, very good for motorcycling, in which we see the Nimrod Fortress on our left, pass through Moshav Neve Ativ, one of the Northernmost Jewish villages in Israel. And just before arriving to the Hermon, we pass through Majdal Shams, a druze village which became globally known after Hezbollah sent a rocket to a football field in the village killing 12 druze children who were playing soccer there.

Well, our arrival to the Hermon showed almost no snow. Actually we could see snow only at the peak of the mountain and at the Syrian side. Being the only ski resort of Israel, this was a disaster for the resort operators, no skiing possible there. But they had some of the summer activities open, like the cable car to the top, the alpine coaster, some VR experiences, etc. There weren't too many visitors, but there were some, mostly people from the region.

From Mount Hermon, we continued to Mas'ade, another Druze town, in order to have lunch. Our lunch was at a restaurant we knew from previous trips to the region, called Steakwood, a brasserie in the town. We had a good lunch for an acceptable price.

We continued, already on our way back, to one of the most beautiful road segments in Israel: the descent from Mevo Hama to Hamat Gader. That is the area marked with a red rectangle on Road 98.

Road 98, which crosses the Golan Heights from North to South, is a great road for motorcycling - beautiful views from Israeli and Syrian Golan, and very nice for riding, with medium-fast speed curves, a true fun ride. Then it arrives to Mevo Hama, and it becomes a stiff hill descent, with slow curves, hairpins (switchbacks for the Americans, serpentines for the Israelis), and gorgeous views to the bottom of the hill. I really recommend seeing the video below until the end, what you see at this part of the road is unmissable.

From Hamat Gader, we continued to Poria Illit, near the Kinneret Lake (Sea of Galilee), and then back to the Golani Junction at Road 77 and from there back home.

Below is the video of the day. This is a great one-day trip in the case you have only one day to visit the Golan area. In this case, you will miss many of the natural attractions of the Golan, but you will certainly get a tast of how beautiful this region is.

​Below is the video of the trip.The video is in 4K, from my Insta360 camera, so I suggest you expand to see it in full screen.

The post today is about the village called Ghajar, or Rhadjar. This is an alawite village in the very north of Israel, in the border with Lebanon.

Rhadjar is very near on the Hatzbani River, on the border between Lebanon and the Israel. The name of the village means "gypsy" in Arabic. As of 2023, it had a population of 2,700, most of whom consider themselves Syrian but have Israeli ID cards.The Blue Line divides Ghajar between Lebanon and the Golan Heights.

The village made itself known as the village of peace, and although being divided between Lebanon and Israel, there is some level of cooperation between its two sides, including people from the Lebanese side that learn at Israeli universities. Inside the village they have the Peace Park, with monuments for the three main religions, Christianism, Jewish and Islam.

During the trip we visited Ghajar and also went to eat luch at the Druse village of Mas'ade.

You can see the movie of the trip embedded below. 

Let me say in advance that this time we won't have a video of the trip. I took into consideration, in advance, that with the low temperatures there at the time, from -3º C to -7º C, keeping my hands out of my pockets to record video was a kind of a torture that I was not interested in.

Our tour plan through all the interesting points of Warsaw had been prepared by ChatGPT and carefully verified by Shmil and myself, so we felt ready to walk through the streets of Warsaw under those freezing temperatures.

Our flight departed at 5 PM, so we arrived at 9 PM to Warsaw, and went directly to sleep. Our hotel was a very comfortable hotel, the Mercure Warsaw Centrum, which had the advantage of being very near to all the touristic places in Warsaw, but always was exactly in front of the biggest shopping mall of the city, the Zlote Tarasy.  Since our flight back would leave on January 1st at 9 PM, we had 4 full days to visit the city.

First Day: Warsaw Old CIty and vicinities

After breakfast, we ordered an Uber that would take us to the old city, and around 10 AM we were already there. The first thing we saw was the Old City Christmas Market, which wasn't very big but was very beautiful and interesting.

The Christmas Market was exactly at the Castle Square, so that was our natural continuation of the walk. We visited all the castle area, walked through the little streets there, visited the Barbikan and continued walking until we found ourselves again in the main street, and decided to find a cafe to drink a glass of hot wine in order to expell the cold that had already gone into our bones.

After the wine, we began walking to the Rapaport Monument, the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The memorial is composed of two monuments within a few meters one from the other, one of them the Rapaport monument. Both can be seen in the pictures below.

From there we continued to the Polin Museum, the museum of the history of the Polish jews. We arrived there around one hour before closure, and 2.5 hours before dark, so we did not visit the museum and decided we would come back in the next day. So we continued to the bunker and the monument of Mila 18, where Mordekhai Anilevitch and his people planned the uprising against the Nazis, and also the place where they were killed. We also visited the Umschlagplatz, the place from where jews were sent to the concentration camps.

One thing that disappointed me a little was that the Ghetto walls were almost completely erased. All that you can see are some marks at the sidewalks marking where the walls were, and some plaques at the extremes of the wall, places that marked the end of the ghetto in each direction.

The uber to the old city was the only one we took that day. The whole visit was done by foot, and so was the return to the hotel. We were lucky, there were signs of snow around, but we did not have any snowfalls at the time we were in the streets. But the cold... that was terrible, specially in the area of Mila 18, where we almost froze completely.

Back in the hotel, via the green tower of the clock, we warmed up a little and went to eat dinner at the Hard Rock restaurant, which was very near.

Second Day: Shopping day

The second day was completely different. We began the day in two separate groups: the girls went to the shopping Zlote Tarasy, in front of the hotel, while Shmil and me travelled some 30 minutes to arrive to the largest motorcycle equipment shop in Warsaw, RRMoto. I was told that the motorcycling scenery in Poland is very advanced, and that shop was the living proof of that statement. The store was enormous, at the same size of any Louis shop in Germany, and they had in stock many options for everything you can desire. I was looking for waterproof riding pants. It took me some 5 different pants to measure and see regarding size and style until I found the one I wanted.

When we left the shop, there was snow falling over our heads! First time! We took an uber back to the hotel, and after leaving the package from the shop in my room, we crossed the street to the Zlote Tarasy shopping, where we met the girls and had something light to eat.

From there, we went back to the Polin Museum, only to discover that it was closed and would be closed through the next 4 days, and to understand that we should have entered it in the previous day, even if it was for seeing it for one hour only... We continued from there to the point monument marking where Mordekhai Anilevitch and the partizans were discovered and killed, and from there, to the Arkadia Shopping, which was close by. There, Louiza and Lily went to browse the shopping, while Shmil and I went to find a place to sit and drink some beers.

When we exited the Arkadia shopping, surprise! Snowfall was filling the ground with snow, which had already accumulated to some 5cm height. As it always happens in this situation, it was impossible to find an Uber or a Bolt car. So we decided to go back to the hotel by foot. It was a long walk, and with the cold and the snow falling over us, a difficult one. But we did it. For the evening, we went to the Zlote Tarasy to eat something.

Third Day: New Year's day and evening

We began the day by visiting the Warsaw Christmas Market at Plac Defilad, which was a 5 minutes walk from the hotel. We visited the area, and then continued walking and visiting some streets around the area. From there we went to stroll Krakowskie street and Nowy Świat. This was a beautiful walk, but we discovered that we had already been in Krakovskie Street in the first day, since the end of that street is at the old town. This time we only did it from the other direction. The street is very interesting, full of shops, cafes and restaurants, a pleasure to tourists.

At some point, the weather became really difficult, so we decided to return to the hotel.

On our way back to the hotel, we suddenly remembered that we had not reserved place anywhere for the New Year's dinner. On our way, we tried to enter some restaurants that looked good and ask, and even to reserve at the Hard Rock Cafe, but there was no place in any of them. The only place in which we managed to get a place was the hotel restaurant, but only at 8 PM. No place later than that. So we accepted our destiny, and had our New Year dinner at 8 PM. The hotel restaurant was excellent, by the way. We wanted to wait until midnight at the lobby, but at the end we understood that we were too tired for that, and we spent the midnight already dreaming at our beds.

Fourth Day: resting and flying back home

We woke up later this day and went for the last moments that breakfast was available. We had plans of going out to visit Lazienki Park that morning, with its lake, castle on the water, Chopin statue and ducks, but the weather did not help us with that. There was snow, and the snow lasted the whole day. No point in visiting an open park in this situation. Since it was the first of January, all shopping options were closed, and the only open businesses in the city were the restaurants. So we decided to get organized at the hotel, and to have a late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was very good to us in the first night. We arranged a late checkout from the hotel, which left us with our rooms until late afternoon, and since we needed to be at the airport at 6 PM, we left the hotel at 5 PM. 

The snow delayed our flight around 2 hours, so instead of arriving to Tel Aviv at 3 AM, we arrived at 5 AM. After taking the luggage and getting the car, we arrived home at around 7 AM, and went directly to sleep.

During our initial planning, Lili and myself planned to go somewhere to spend 4-5 days in a spa, in my case to recover from the Himalaya experience, and in her case from 8 months of taking care of our grandson until he can get into our education system. But during my trip to the Himalayas, I received a message from her telling me we had joined a couple of good friends for a 2-day hike in Via Transilvanica in Romania, from Sighișoara, via Criș and until ​Mălâncrav, totalling 26 Kms.

Quite a surprise!

When I came back home, we began to plan our part in the trip. Our friends, José and Maya, already had the trip planned, with dates, flight tickets, hotel or places to sleep, etc, and we had to find our way of fitting into the plan. Additionally, after the hike, they were planning to do a tour by car to a number of places in which we had already been in our previous visit to Romania in 2017. So I came to the idea of finding a Spa in Sighișoara, the point where we began the hike, but also the point we returned to after it ended, to get the things we left at the hotel there.

Luckily I managed to find a promising Hotel Spa in Sighișoara, the Double Tree by Hilton, and reserved a room for us there for two nights. Regarding the other hotels and pensions in Bucharest, Sighișoara, Criș and ​Mălâncrav, part of it was easy to book reservations, and for the other part, our friends extended their reservation for two rooms and 4 people.

So, here we were flying to Romania and getting ready for fulfilling the plan. It was the evening of October 3, and our friends were already there since the end of the morning. Another couple of friends, Louiza and Shmil, were finishing their motorcycle tour in Romania, which I helped to plan, and we had ONE overlapping day in Bucharest, October 4th.

With the delay of the Wizzair flight and the wait of 1h20min for the Bucharest Otopeni Airport to release our luggage, we arrived to the hotel already after midnight. Our hotel, hotel Venezia, was old, but very comfortable for a 3-star hotel. We had a great night of sleep there.

The first day was a free day in Bucharest, which Lili and me used for initially going to the Schuberth helmets dealer in the city to buy a new helmet for her. At the end we bought the helmet with the original communication system and a new original communication system to install in my Schuberth helmet. Then we went to the AFI mall, considered the biggest in Bucharest, and walked around the mall. We already knew Bucharest from the last trip, and we were planning to see the Ceaucescu's House (the only main attraction in the city we hadn't seen at the time) in the last day with José and Maya, so taking a relaxed walk at the mall was OK. At the AFI Mall we met with Louiza and Shmil, and when the evening came, both couples took the metro to meet with José and Maya and have a dinner the six of us together at one of the famous restaurants of Bucharest, the Hanu' Berarilor Uranus. The hotel was very characteristic of Bucharest, with an interesting design and live shows.

After dinner, we said goodbye to Louiza and Shmil (who would still stay in Bucharest some more days), and went to sleep, getting ready for the long drive to Sighișoara in the following day.

In the next morning we met José and Maya at the Avis office at the Grand Hotel Bucharest, where we got the car and began our trip to Sighișoara.

The views from the car were beautiful, and made me remember our ride in Romania from 2017. Made me also think about how the experience of the road and the views around it on a motorcycle can be so different from experiencing the same road inside a car. I would define it like this: while in a car one feels like he is seeing a movie, when you are on the motorcycle you are the main star of the movie. You are inside the movie - you see the views, you smell the smells, you sometimes get wet from the light drops of rain... and everything that can be connected to this  experience.

After some hours, we stopped for lunch in a small town called Caraiman. It was a beautiful place, that gave a kind of a Switzerland feeling...

By the end of daylight, we arrived to our hotel at Sighișoara, a pension called Carolina House. We were received by Dan, the very sympathetic manager of the place. The place was small, as beautiful as it can be, with very comfortable rooms (all in all 4 rooms), and a manager that is ready to do everything to help. If someone is lookiing for a small and comfortable hotel in Sighișoara, I can definitely recommend Carolina House.

From the hotel we went for a walk to the Sighișoara Citadel, the ancient center of the city that stands strong at the top of a hill. Lili and me already knew the Citadel, so we showed the place to José and Maya, and went to have dinner at a very nice restaurant called Georgius Kraus.

​In the morning, we woke up early, got ready for the 2-day walk, packed our bags for leaving them stored at Carolina house, and went for breakfast. There we met Carolina, Dan's wife and the inspiration for the name of the pension. She was the person responsible for the kitchen, that was besides the very beautiful dining room they had there.

Oh, there is nothing like a good breakfast before going out for a hiking day. And our breakfast was perfect! So it was the perfect time to store our luggage, say goodbye to our hosts and leave for our adventure at Via Transilvânica.

The day was very gray, and very soon rain began pouring down. We put on our raincoats, and were ready to leave.

We left Carolina House, walked for around 30 minutes, and for some reason, we began noticing that things were not really where they should be comparing to our map. A bridge that we should cross was not in its exact position, there was another bridge that we couldn't see in the map...

After some discussion and verification, the alarming veredict: we have left the pension to the opposite direction of the one we should be walking. We had to go back to the pension and begin it all from scratch in the other direction.

​This time, walking in the correct direction, we found the reference points as we expected, and soon we were at the beginning of Via Transilvanica, which left ​Sighișoara to the South in the direction of Criș and ​Mălâncrav. We were supposed to climb up approximately 200m to a hill at an altitude of approximately 60-100m. The climbing was not very long, but with the rain and the mud which got stuck to our boots and made them weight 20 Kg, it looked like a lot more.

From the top of the hill we could see Sighișoara from above, a very nice view. When we entered the track (first picture above), we saw a sign warning us from bears. We had read about the bears in the region and understood how to proceed if we met one, but the signed warned against walking after dark in the region. Well, the whole hike of the day was supposed to end before dark, so there we went.

After getting to the top, we were supposed to get to a plateau (a plain) at the top, and keep walking with the track, supposedly a very easy and comfortable walk. With the rain, the walk became tougher, the feet heavy from all the mud, the way very slippy. As well, there were definitely easy parts of the hike where we went in plains, but there were some parts that were not easy at all, in which we needed to go up and down narrow and slippery slopes, which made us walk slower. But the way was just too beautiful to be ignored.

Forests, open fields, hills... footsteps of wolves...

​We were supposed to walk around 9 Km until Stejărenii and then complete another 4 Km to Criș. We wasted around one hour walking out of the hotel to the wrong direction, took a long time to climb up the hill with the rain, then took another wrong path which wasted another half-hour... the result is that, while we expected to get to Stejărenii by 13:00, we arrived there only at 16:00, and we were very tired. Understanding that the remaining 4 Km would bring us to hours after sunset, and remembering the bear sign which warned us against walking in the dark, we began walking through the village and looking for a solution that would take us from Stejărenii to Criș.

Suddenly Lili saw a yellow car parked near one of the houses, with the word "Transportul" written on it. Transportul is a parallel for Transporte in Portuguese, which means Transportation. She knocked on the door of the house, and a little girl, around 10 years old came out. While she tried very much to help, her lack of English was making things difficult, so she called her mother on the phone. The mother, whose name was Alina, which was at a nearby house, came over to talk to us. She said the car belonged to her husband, but he was far away working. When we asked if she knew someone that could talke us the 4 Km to Criș, she said "come with me, I will take you in my car". She opened the car, we jumped in, and she took us until the entry of Criș castle, where we would sleep that night. We tried to pay her something for the trip, and she wouldn't accept. Only when we proposed her to give it to her daughter for saving us, so she can buy a present for herself, she accepted the money.

The Criș Castle is known this way because it is the only castle in Criș, but it's official name is Bethlen Castle.

We were told that the initial remains of the castle learns that it was initially built in the 13th century, but then rebuilt in 1621. This is the story that is told in Wikipedia:

We were received in the castle by the manager, an interesting man called Levente Birtalan, an archeologist who had been working on the reconstruction of the castle since 2020. An interesting interview with him regarding the restauration of the castle can be read in this link. He was a very nice and interesting person, and promised us that in the next morning he would give us an explanation of all that we see in the castle.

The castle is still being restaured, and it doesn't function as an hotel. They have only five very simple rooms, which usually are used by guests who are doing the Via Transilvanica, for a fee which is used to help in the restauration budget. Since the only hotel in Criș was closed due to a closed event, the hotel management managed to arrange us rooms at the castle, and I can say we were very lucky to sleep there.

Criș is a small commune in Mureș County. The county is composed of four villages: Criș, Daneș, Seleuș and Stejărenii. The population of Criș is approximately 4,700 people. The village has one hotel and no restaurants (except for the one at the hotel), and some of the families there are used to offer meals to the hikers at a fair price.So, our friend José took the care in advance to arrange for dinner and breakfast with a family there.

After getting our rooms in the castle, having a shower and cleaning up from the rainy and muddy day behind us, we met the lady from the Criș Hotel (officially called Bethlen Estates Transilvania) who helped José to arrange everything we needed for our night in Criș, went out for a walk in the village and to our dinner's host. There we met Daniela and her family. Daniela had prepared a dinner for us, which was served in the main room of her house. The house was beautiful, modern and neat. We enjoyed dinner, and then went back to the Bethlen Castle to sleep.

In the morning, after the breakfast at Daniela's, we went back to the castle for Mr. Levente's expositions of what we had there. It was a very interesting presentation of the history of the Castle. There we discovered that the castle had been expropriated from the Bethlen family during the communist regime, and only in the last years returned to the ownership of the family. So, if we take the total years from 1621 and until 2025, even disconsidering the days that the communist government took over the property, it is one of the only cases in Europe in which a castle belongs to the same family for 400 years and more.

Rain continued to fall also during this day. Mr. Levente proposed that he could take us to Mălâncrav in the afternoon, so this would give us also the opportunity to see a Jewish cemetery that he had just uncovered in Criș with the help of some elderly from the village.

We walked to the cemetery for around 40 minutes in each direction. I had to stop at some point of the walk because it became too difficult for me. But Lili, José and Maya were there at the end. The cemetery was composed of 14 tombs, with hebrew inscriptions on them.

After the cemetery visit, we gathered our things together and Mr. Levente took us to Mălâncrav, which is near where he lives and around 13 Kms from Criș. We arrived in Mălâncrav around 14:30 and went directly to the house where we were supposed to sleep, a kind of an AirBNB house called Mălâncrav 335.

Mălâncrav was even smaller than Criș, with only 3,100 inhabitants. It made me remember a joke from the Israeli music group Kaveret, from the 70s, which told that "... it was such a small village that, if there was a wedding there, then the groom was also the bride". The fact is that the village was so small that the numbering of the houses was not separated by streets, but a continuous numbering for the whole town. So our house, Mălâncrav 335, was the 335th house in Mălâncrav.

The house was a big, old house, with 3 rooms and a kitchen, all in a row. Outside, a very big open garden and a storage room. It was clear that it had been in its history the house of a family there. For some reason (death or moving), whoever lived there left, and now it was for rent for short periods.

Unaware of the size of the village, we went out to walk a little and find a cafe to have some coffee or tea. We found a small supermarket at one of the streets, and asked the cashier if there is some place in town where we can have some tea. A lady neaby, a customer, said "Yes, my home, you are invited!". And there we went.

Talking there while having our tea, she asked where we are staying, and we answered "Mălâncrav 335".

"Oh", she said, "that house is ours! So you are the ones who are supposed to come here for dinner and for breakfast!"

Yes, by coincidence, from the 3100 inhabitants of the town, we fell exactly at the home of Lucilla, our host and the person from whom we order also dinner and breakfast. We talked a little more and went back to the house to have a shower and get ready for dinner.

Dinner was really fine. We had some excellent home schnitzels, and other things, including a tasty dessert. We went back to our rooms to sleep with a full stomach. Walking at night at those empty streets, with the silence and the dark is an impressive feeling, of those kinds that we, city rats, have already forgotten.

In the following day, after breakfast at Lucilla's home, we went to see the Fortified Church of Mălâncrav. Unfortunately, we got there and it was closed, despite the fact that those were its opening hours. We called the responsible by phone, and he said that unfortunately he could open it only after 10:30. This was already the time in which we were supposed to be in the taxi that would take us back to Sighișoara, so we had to give up on the visit and travel back to the Carolina House.

We spent that afternoon and evening again at the Sighișoara Citadel, this time with much more time to visit. We were there from around 14:00 until the evening. We still had rain, and borrowed four umbrellas from Carolina House for our afternoon out. We were able, with the help of the umbrellas, to see all around the Citadel, including going up and down the Scara Acoperita, a set of covered stairs built in 1642 which takes us to the highest part of the Citadel.

In the evening, we went to eat dinner at another very recommended restaurant in the citadel, called Joseph Haydn. We had a very good dinner there, including (for different people) pizza, pasta, hamburger and a pork steak. All portions were excellent. For desert, we had a very different Papanași, because in this restaurant, they bake it instead of deep-frying it.

In the continuation, we came down from the citadel to walk a little through the modern center of ​Sighișoara. Not many points of interest to be found there.

Next day, after breakfast, we had the separation moment. This was the moment in which José and Maya went apart from us for their tour of Romania, while Lili and me stayed in Sighișoara and moved to the Double Tree by Hilton Sighișoara for our 2 days of relaxing spa in the city.

We arrived to the Double Tree at 10:00, and were supposed to receive our room only at 15:00, so we decided to leave our luggage there and walk to the train station to buy our train tickets back to Bucharest. We bought the tickets, went into a supermarket to buy some things, walked a little through the modern center (it was a little more lively during the day comparing to the previous night) and returned to the hotel around 12:30. At 13:00 the hotel manager called and told us our room was ready. We went up to the room, changed clothes to spa clothes, and went down to the spa. There, Lili went to the sauna while I went to the pool. The pool was very nice, water around 25°C, and two waterfalls for hydromassage at the border which were very, very nice indeed.

We stayed at the spa until 15:30, and also set a massage for each one of us for the next morning.

In the afternoon/evening, Lili and me went back to the citadel and the Joseph Haydn restaurant to try some other items at the menu. As expected, it was an excellent evening with an excellent dinner, and even some good icecream at the end.

We woke up in the following morning, had breakfast and went to another walk in the modern center - we needed a supermarket again. On our way, suddenly Lili stopped and said "What a good smell!". The smell was really very good, and came from the ventilation system of a small restaurant placed in the building of a small pension, very near our hotel. Nothing touristic. "I want to have dinner here!", she said, and we agreed we would do it that evening.

After the walk and the supermarket, we went back to the spa, had our massages and some hours of pool/jacuzzi/sauna, a very relaxing afternoon. Then we went to rest a little for the evening.

In the evening, we went out to walk a little at the area surrounding the hotel, and after that, to have dinner in the restaurant Lili had discovered in the morning. The restaurant was called San Gennaro, it was part of a pension or small hotel by the same way, and I can say that was the place in which we had our best meal in Romania during this trip. It was a local restaurant, very simple, no special design, and filled with local people, maybe locals from Sighișoara, maybe tourists from other cities in the country. We were then only tourists from another country there.

We began with a starter, Lili went for a salad, and I chose the fried cheese starter. The salad was excellent, and I received a quickback to my youth in Brazil when we used to go to bars and have snacks of Fried Provolone Cheese, with two difference: there they were cut in small cubes or balls, while here they were two large triancles like half a slice of bread, and there they used Provolone cheese, while here they used Gouda cheese. It was fantastic.

For the main dish, Lili chose the Crispy Chicken Schnitzel while I chose the Viennaise Schnitzel. My schnitzel was excellent, I don't remember exactly if the meat was pork or cow meat, but it was fantastic. Lili's Crispy Schnitzel was more than fantastic - instead of using breadcrumbs for the crispy covering, they used corn flakes, and that gave a crispness that we don't see very commonly.

​To end with a desert, we asked for a Papanași, and got the best Papanași we ate in Romania up to today.

During dinner, we received José and Maya's picture from Balea Lake, the place that they were visiting that day.

Balea Lake, a spot on the Transfagarasan road, is a lake on the top of the mountains, at 2,000 meters altitute. It was covered with snow, as usually in this season.

Next morning, at 9:00, we were already checked out from the Double Tree and at the train station, waiting for the train that would take us to Bucharest.

When the train arrived, we had a kind of a bad surprise: the train had a very weird way of numbering the seats - until today I haven't managed to understand the algorythm they used, and despite the fact that we had seats 72 and 73, they were not in the same row and we were separated. Worse than that, both seats were with their back to the direction of the trip, something that Lili can't stand. Then we decided to invade two empty seats in the same car, that had their direction consistent to the direction of the trip. We had a very good 3 hours of trip until in Brasov the owners of those seats arrived, and we found another two empty seats that took us until Bucharest.

The length of the trip: 6 hours. Looks tough, but if you focus on looking at the beautiful views outside instead of being lost inside the train, the trip goes quite fast. I took a lot of pictures of the views on the way, here are some examples.

During the trip, Lili told me that in Bucharest, besides visiting the Ceaucescu's House, she has heard that also the Victoria street was a good place to go. I answered to her, "You are in your lucky day, our hotel is at the Victoria street". And indeed it was. The Capitol Hotel Bucharest was at one of the ends of the Victoria street, a very nice 4-star hotel at a very accessible price, and with excellent rooms and service.

We took our room and went to explore Victoria street. We had a feeling that ALL Bucharest were there walking in the street, and although it was a Saturday night, it was strange. It was packed with people. Asking around, we discovered that once every year, for ONE weekend only (Saturday and Sunday), there is a Lights and Laser festival on this street, called SPOTLIGHT, from 19:00 to 23:00. We were lucky enough to arrive exactly on that weekend. It was still 17:00, so, after some walking around, we sat down to eat a pizza on a nice pizza bar at the street and waited for the beginning of the festival.

It was worth waiting. It was a feast to the eyes. Laser projections on the streets, movie projections making the buildings on the street look alive, a giant blue light whale in the sky, and a non-ending number of other expositions all around the street. It was beautiful. In most cases, I recorded video of the street show, but here are some pictures I still managed to capture.

The following day was the last day of our visit. We began by visiting a shopping center, the Parklake Mall, which was not very interesting, except for the architecture and the park nearby with the lake. We returned to the hotel quite quicly.

In the afternoon, we took an Uber to the Ceaucescu's House, where we were to meet José and Maya for our last day, both couples flying back to Israel in the next morning. On our way to Ceaucescu's house, we saw an interesting thing: a Karting Tour of Bucharest, a line of Karts travelling in the middle of the Bucharest traffic. We asked around and discovered that this tour begins at the Promenade mall, and can be ordered in advance.

Ceaucescu's House was an interesting visit. It was interesting to hear about Romania in its communist days. It was clear that they showed only the positive points of the government, forgetting all the people he killed and that he and his family were put down in a violent revolution and went down into history's Hall of Shame. But the most interesting thing I've noticed was that the house, despite its enormous size, with 40-50 rooms that made 5 separate apartments in the same house, was not a very rich house - well, maybe yes if we compare it to the poverty in Romania at the time, but not if you compare it to the castles of other leaders that we managed to see on TV in the near past, like Saddam Hussein's houses, Assad's or even Ghadafi houses. Ceaucescu's house was mostly in wood, if compared to those other leaders' houses with all the gold. The few golden items in the house were gold plated. Unfortunately it is forbidden to take pictures or record videos inside the house.

After the visit at Ceaucescu's house, we took José and Maya to the Victoria street so that they could also see the festival we had seen in the previous day. Before the festival began, we entered a place called Mayfair 39 to eat the craziest dessert we have eaten in our life: it is a building of very fluffy pancakes with cream and a topping that you choose from the various possibilities in the menu. An incredible dessert which is a full meal.

CONCLUSION

I love Romania. In 2017 I had the most lovely possible motorcycle tour in the country, and this trip only confirmed it. The country is beautiful, the people are among the nicest in Europe, and the cities are thrilling and full of life.

Regarding Via Transilvanica: I loved the two days that we had there. Would I do the hike again??? Definitely not. A man has to understand and accept his limitations. The problem is not Via Transilvanica, it is me - I am over the age (and definitely over the weight) to do these things, despite the fact that I loved doing them 40 years ago. But the place is beautiful, if you have the physical preparation and the spirit to do it, I recommend it.

Uber works only in Bucharest. In the other places, we had to relay to taxis. But the price of the taxis in those places is so low that everything is fine.

The SPOTLIGHT festival was the topping on top of the cake, which finished our trip with a golden key. If you have the chance to plan your visit to Bucharest on the weekend of the festival, do it.

​Last but not least: I have prepared a video of the whole trip - 20 minutes of pleasure. Here it is for your delight:

​Before the motorcycle journey

​I decided that I wanted to see a little of Delhi and vicinities before I got to the tour, so on July 11th I was already landing in Delhi. I took this day for resting, and also had to do a last minute hotel change, after I discovered that the hotel I reserved on booking.com did not exist, and the address took me to a different hotel which was some levels worse than the hotel announced there and had my reservation, making it clear that the beautiful hotel in booking.com was a scam. Welcome to India!!!
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​After resting from the flights in my new hotel, I took July 12th to visit the Red Fort in New Delhi, and then travelled to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Here are some pictures of the Red Fort (click on any picture to see them in full size):

​The fort, also called Lal Qila is a fort built by the emperor Shah Jahan after he decided to move the capital from Agra to Delhi. It has a massive wall separating it from the rest of the city, and inside many buildings where different departments of his government were located. Nowadays, all these buildings were converted into museums that cover different areas of that period. A visit to the place can take between 2 hours, if you don’t go into the museums, to 4 hours if you visit the museums one by one.

From there, as said above, I travelled to Agra and to the Taj Mahal. There are many things to see in Agra, it can be a full day visit, but the Taj Mahal was the one that interested me.

​The Taj Mahal was constructed by the same emperor, Shah Jahan, as a monument to the love of his life, his third wife Mumtaz Mahal. His previous two wives, who were part of convenience marriages, are also buried in the compound, near the East and West gates. The great love of his life, however, who died giving birth to their 14th child, is buried in the main mausoleum in the main building.
​Here are some pictures of the Taj Mahal.

I must say that the Taj Mahal disappointed me a little. Those pictures of that bucolic place with one-two people going around are long gone. Around 10-15 years ago, the government decided that the price was too high for locals to visit it, and created a different price for Indian citizens, very low. As a result, the place is packed with people, there is a lot of noise and movement. At the moment you arrive to the parking lot with a taxi, some 20 “tour guides” will attack you and they will not let you by any means say “not interested” and go inside by yourself. They will follow you until you choose one to go with you. Whoever you will choose will not contribute to your knowledge more than you can read about in Wikipedia. Their main interest is to take you to the area of the artisans that make gifts for you to buy and take home, from whom they receive a commission that is probably like what you pay them.

​I must also say: the Taj Mahal is 176 Km from New Delhi, and in Indian times this means a trip of approximately 3 hours by car or 3-4 hours by train. So, take this into account when planning your trip.

​I woke up late on July 13th and decided to take the afternoon visiting the “largest shopping center in India”. The place is actually a compound of three malls, the DLF Promenade, the DLF Emporium, and the Ambience Mall. All the three are high-level brands malls, where the higher-class of Delhi citizens come to buy, and all the known brands are present in at least one of the buildings. According to my understanding, the DLF Emporium is more sophisticated than the other two (and probably more expensive as well). Anyway, three buildings, three malls, three food plazas, it is worth the visit.

July 14th arrived, and with it, the beginning of our tour. The group met at 12:30 at the Holiday Inn Aerocity in order to receive a first briefing of what the tour is going to be and how it will be conducted, have a first lunch together, and then go into a bus that would take us to Manali, where we would receive the motorcycles.

The group included 18 people: 6 people from Australia, 6 from Ecuador, 5 from the US, and me.

First thing that impressed me when I arrived was that I was given this set of 8 high level identification plastic cards and asked to tie one to each of my luggage items.

The briefing was thorough, and we were able to understand what to expect of the tour in every aspect: the scenery, the difficulty levels at each part, the quality of accommodations of the different types, and even some things regarding costumes at the different areas that we would pass.

After a very good lunch, some group pictures, etc, at 14:30 we were entering our bus to Manali. Our adventure was finally beginning. We were supposed to arrive in Manali around 3-4 AM in the next day.

During the trip with the bus, after approximately 4 hours, we stopped in the parking lot of a restaurant in the middle of the road. We entered the restaurant and were served a king's dinner. It was definitely one of the best meals I've had in India.

The first feeling of adventure came around 3-4 hours later than that. Suddenly, the bus stopped in the middle of the road, and we were informed that a landslide had blocked the main road to Manali, and there was no way that the bus could continue, since it was too big for travelling the old road, that goes up the mountain and down from the other side. Seven taxis were already waiting for us where the bus stopped, and each of us was directed to one of them with our luggage.

The taxis went out from the main road to the secondary old road, an old mountain road, narrow and full of curves, which kept us awake the rest of the night. It was like going in a rollercoaster ride in the dark. Here is a little video of the trip after the photos. 

We arrived to Manali around 6:00 in the morning and were received with typical hats and scarfs. I took some pictures, got my room and went directly to sleep. I woke up for lunch, and during lunch was instructed to take another one of my identification plastic cards, choose a motorcycle from the ones parking at the parking lot, and tie my card to the keys of that motorcycle. That’s what I did.

Around 16:00 we went out for a test drive with the motorcycles, at the end of which each of us was supposed to point out every change or fix he/she needed in the motorcycle to the company’s mechanics. Luckily, my bike did not need any changes. Some of them needed things like brakes adjustments, mirrors strengthening, change of tires, etc.
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I was ready to begin our adventure in the next morning.

Day 1 – 16/7/2025: Manali to Anni (130 km, 5-6 hours)
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At 08:30 exactly, our adventure began at the hotel in Manali. Manali is nestled in the Kullu Valley. The initial stretch through the valley offered us green landscapes, and the gentle Beas River accompanying our ride. This, together with rain and a lot of traffic. The road gradually climbed as we left the valley behind. Roads became narrow and winding, and the traffic did not become less than what it previously was, making the ride quite stressing. We hadn’t expected to find this traffic in the area, but were advised by the organizers that we would meet it. To our group, the company added three riders: a leader, a marshal and a sweeper. At the end, after the sweeper, 4 cars, two of them with our luggage, one with the team of mechanics and logistics, and one truck with a documentation team who would follow us (and sometimes be at the front) and document our group in photos and videos for further advertising of the company.

The highlight of the day was conquering Jalori Pass (3,292 meters), our first taste of high-altitude riding. This scenic pass offered panoramic views of the Kullu and Kinnaur ranges, with prayer flags fluttering in the mountain breeze. The winding road through dense forests of oak and deodar created a mystical atmosphere.  Roads were narrow and not really maintained, at least not enough for the traffic they had.

Arriving in Anni, a small village in the Kinnaur Valley, we noticed the dramatic change in landscape and culture. The apple orchards gave way to barren mountains, and Tibetan influence became evident in the architecture and local customs. We slept in a camping area, where tents were already waiting for us and a cuisine staff was waiting for serving us a snack and dinner.
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For getting to our camp, we had to do a tight U-turn on the road and then go down with the motorcycles through a tight, steep path down (around 25% inclination) which was fully mud, and then cross a narrow bridge to park the bikes. Some people managed to do it, some didn’t. I was proud to be one of those that did it.

Day 2 – 17/7/2025: Ani to Kalpa (80 km, 4-5 hours)
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After a difficult night in which I slept only 2 hours, I understood that my biggest challenge in this trip will be sleeping on tents, which don’t have electricity for me to connect my CPAP machine.

On this day, the organizers set the standard for our days: waking up at 7:00, breakfast at 7:30, leaving the place at 8:30. They did not wait for us to take the bikes up through that muddy path, when we ended breakfast, the bikes were already up on the road waiting for us.

The morning ride took us deeper into the Kinnaur Valley, one of India's most picturesque regions. The road hugged the Sutlej River, offering spectacular views of the Kinnaur Kailash range. The landscape transformed little by little from green valleys to dramatic gorges and high peaks.

Near Kalpa, we stopped on a place that the company staff called “Suicide Point”. At first I thought they were joking, but it was enough to search Google Maps for “Suicide Point Kalpa” to see that the place is marked on the map exactly under this name. And, to tell you the truth, any point of this road would make the perfect suicide point... for whoever is looking forward to it.
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Our destination, Kalpa, provided stunning views of the Kinnaur Kailash peak. I didn’t know the name of the peak, and had to look for it on the Internet to find it. It was on the top of a hill. These villages showcase traditional architecture with slate-roofed houses and intricate wood carvings. The Buddhist and Hindu influences blend seamlessly there, creating a unique cultural tapestry. We had a nice hotel in Kalpa, a surprise since we were expecting Fixed Swiss Tents.

Day 3 – 18/07/2025: Kalpa to Nako (120 km, 6-7 hours)
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At 7:30 we were ready at the breakfast tent, where the chef had prepared a great Indian breakfast for us, which was well enjoyed. At 8:30, we went to the bikes and prepared for the riding day.

Today's ride crossed the boundary into Spiti Valley territory, marking a significant cultural and geographical shift.
The road became increasingly challenging as we entered deeper into Spiti Valley, often called "Little Tibet." The landscape turned stark and beautiful, with barren mountains in shades of brown, ochre, and purple.

​Still in Kalpa, we were delayed by an hour and a half in order to get the permits necessary to traffic in the county. At this time we were able to visit the center of the village.

However, as we got nearer to Nako, road conditions began to become very challenging, as they would be until the end of our visit to Spiti Valley. Nako, perched beside a high-altitude lake, offered a serene end to a hard riding day.

Our hotel in Nako was good and comfortable, and I was happy to be again in a hotel with electricity to charge all my devices (phone, two cameras, bluetooth mic) and to sleep again a full night with the help of my CPAP device.
Here are some pictures and videos that show the happenings of this day.

Day 4 – 19/07/2025: Nako to Mud (90 km, 5-6 hours)
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As usually, we left Nako at 8:30. The ride continued through the heart of the Spiti Valley, passing through villages that seemed frozen in time.

And then... a landslide blocked our way. The army brought tractors from both sides of the landslide, to free the road as soon as possible, but also this way, the expected wait was around 3-3.5 hours. And then... the coolant pipe at the tractor on our side broke and it was made unusable. It took around one hour for a replacement pipe to be brought and replaced at the tractor's engine. At the end, we waited around 4.5 hours in a cafe in the area, waiting for the heavy machinery brought by the road maintenance to reopen the road. When it was already enough for the motorcycles to pass, the whole group passed through.

We continued with a visit to Giu Monastery, famous for its naturally mummified monk - a 500-year-old preserved body that draws pilgrims and curious travelers alike. The legend tells that the mummified body of the monk was found, and after tests were done, they uncovered the fact that no conservation materials were use in the mummy. They also noticed that his hair and nails were still growing. Their conclusion was that the monk was not dead; in the last 500 years he has been in a state of deep meditation. Believe it if you want and can, but the idea is charming...

The landscape became increasingly dramatic as we approached our destination, which we thought to be Mud, the last village accessible by road in the Pin Valley. We found our camping, had dinner and went to sleep.

Here are some pictures of the day and the video about the moment we finally passed the landslide barrier:

Day 5 – 20/07/2025: Mud to Kaza via Komic Village (60 km, 4-5 hours)
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It was only in the next morning that we understood that we were NOT in Mud, and that when they heard about the landslide and the four hours that we lost there, the camping team just dismounted all the camp and mounted it again in a place closer to us, in order to avoid the need to have us riding at night. If someone was still not sure of their efficiency and proactivity, this was the final proof.

Today's shorter distance allowed for exploration and acclimatization. The route took us from our camp, marked on the map, through Komic Village (or Koumik, as it appears on the map), one of the world's highest villages with a motor road, sitting at 4,587 meters. There we sat for a delicious tea at “The highest restaurant in the world” and also made a visit to “The highest post office in the world”, from where I sent a postcard home. I am already at home and still waiting for this postcard to arrive, and I will update this article on the day it arrives, IF it does. I’ve heard my American friends in the group have already begun receiving theirs... well, probably mine will get stuck in the Israeli mail service.

During this day, the first toughts about the size of what I was seeing began coming through my mind. It was interesting that despite the fact we were all the time climbing in altitude, we were all the time travelling in valleys, with mountains around us. Somehow, as we climbed from valley to valley, the mountains climbed together with us. This began giving me an idea of the size and the strength of the mountains, and how small I was comparing to this all...

Kaza, the administrative center of Spiti, provided modern amenities after days in remote villages. It was very entertaining to visit the city center and look around at the shops – except for a sudden monsoon rain that got our people wet from head to toes.

Here are the pictures of this day, one of the most interesting days until now.

Day 6 – 21/07/2025: Kaza to Moon Lake (140 km, 7-8 hours)
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This was one of the most challenging yet rewarding days of our journey. The route began with the ascent to Kunzum Pass (4,551 meters), where we’ve found the Kunzum Mata Temple. Locals believe the goddess protects travellers, and stopping there for blessings is considered essential.

Before that, we visited the “Old Aged Home Spiti Kee”, a home for the elderly people in the area that is handled by charity. Ride the Himalayas brought a truckload of food to donate there in our name. I don’t know exactly how much we had there, but according to the size and quantity of the sacs, I believe we had between 90-100 Kg of food. In retribution, the old lady that managed the place gave a blessing to each one of us.

We also visited the Key (or Kee) Monastery before getting to Komic, perched dramatically on a hilltop, which serves as the spiritual heart of Spiti. This 1,000-year-old monastery houses around 300 monks and contains rare manuscripts, ancient musical instruments, and Buddha statues. The monastery's fortress-like appearance against the stark landscape creates an unforgettable image. Inside the monastery, meditation caves serve the monks to guarantee their solitude.

The temple is built around a natural rock formation. Prayer flags flutter against the stark blue sky, creating a spiritual atmosphere at this high altitude.

Moon Lake (Chandratal), our destination, sits at 4,300 meters and is considered one of the most beautiful high-altitude lakes in the Himalayas. The crescent-shaped lake reflects the surrounding peaks, creating an almost surreal landscape. Camping here under star-filled skies provides an unforgettable experience.

The road was very challenging, I had the feeling that I had been put inside a kitchen blender, and it was activated. Many people felt like me. At the end of the day, around 16:00, we arrived at our camp in Moon Lake. Part of the group decided to go and visit the lake, while part of the group (the lazy ones – including me) stayed at the camp to rest. As it usually happened in the camps or Swiss Tents (Glamping) days, there was not much to do after dinner, which happened everyday at 19:30, so around 21:00 I was already in bed trying to sleep until the next morning.
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Here are some pictures of this beautiful day.

Day 7 – 22/07/2025: Moon Lake to Sissu (84 km, 3-4 hours)
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This was a short day, but a very beautiful one.

The short but scenic ride to Sissu allowed us to fix in our minds the high-altitude landscape before descending into the Lahaul Valley. The route offers spectacular views of glaciated peaks and the gradual change from the stark Spiti landscape to the greener Lahaul region.

Sissu, located in the Lahaul Valley, provides a welcome change with its flowing streams. The village is famous for its waterfall and serves as a base for various trekking expeditions. The Lahaul Valley culture blends Tibetan and Indian influences, reflected in the local architecture and customs.

We arrived quite early to our hotel in Sissu and went for a rest. As usual, snacks were served at 16:30 and dinner at 19:30. I don’t remember exactly at what time I went to sleep, but I believe that after the sleepless night in the Swiss Tents at Moonlake, probably at 21:00 I was already in bed.
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One nice video of the day below. We had some rain on the way, and a lot of switchback curves. Along the mountains, this forms a very beautiful view. But we haven't had anything on this day that I have decided that was worth taking pictures of.

Day 8 – 23/07/2025: Sissu to Sarchu (90 km, 5-6 hours)
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Today we had again a short day, in term of kilometers, but a long day in terms of time. The 90 Km we needed to do involved crossing Baralacha La Pass (4,890 meters), a major milestone in our journey. This pass connects the Lahaul and Ladakh regions and offers spectacular views of the Chandrabhaga and Bhaga river valleys. The landscape became increasingly barren and moon-like as we approached the pass. We went up the pass from the Lahaul side, and downhill at the Ladakh side.

We sat to eat lunch at a very interesting restaurant which was like a big tent with beds - food was very good, and we had some time to rest from the trip.

Sarchu, sitting in the Sarchu Valley at 4,290 meters, serves as a major camping ground for Leh-bound travellers. This high-altitude desert plateau experiences extreme weather conditions, with temperatures dropping significantly at night even in summer. The valley's stark beauty, surrounded by multi-coloured mountains, creates an otherworldly atmosphere. It is used mainly because the distance between Sissu and Leh, around 350 Km, is too big to be done in one day due to the road conditions.

We had Swiss Tents again in Sarchu, since the place has almost nothing.
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Some pictures of the day:

Day 9 – 24/07/2025: Sarchu to Leh (250 km, 10-12 hours)
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This was the longest and most challenging day of our journey, at least until now – around 9 hours of riding which  involved crossing multiple high-altitude passes.

We crossed Nakela Pass (4,739 meters) which provided stunning views of the Ladakh range before the final descent into the Ladakh Valley.

The route then tackled Lachung La (5,065 meters), followed by the formidable Tanglang La Pass (5,359 meters) - the second-highest motorable pass in the world at the time of this journey, and 12th highest mountain pass in the world, if we consider all the passes, and not only the motorable. Considering that in the past the highest place I had ever been was Ticlio, near Lima, Peru, with its 4,190 meters, on this day I broke all my previous records of altitude.

The landscape transformed dramatically as we approached Leh, with the Indus Valley's green oasis appearing like a mirage after hours of barren terrain.

Leh, the ancient capital of Ladakh, welcomed us with its architecture, bustling bazaars, and the majestic Leh Palace overlooking the city. The city's strategic location on the ancient Silk Route is evident in its multicultural atmosphere. The city has a very nice main commercial road, an even nicer main market (or bazaar), and from the top of a mountain just besides our hotel, a fortress stood strong guarding the whole city.

I must admit that 250 Km sitting on a Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 on that road, which despite being paved was a very difficult ride, left me with a sour butt, and I had to rest. So, knowing that we had the next day as a free day to visit the city, I decided not to go out and to spend the night at the hotel.
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Here are the pictures of the long day to Leh.

Day 10 – 25/07/2025: Rest Day in Leh
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After nine intense days of mainly off-road riding, a rest day in Leh was essential for both physical recovery and motorcycle exchange. I will explain: there is a law in the Ladakh region that tries to protect the local businesses, since the tourism period is too short. According to this law, a series of things are forbidden in the whole county: one of them is riding rental bikes that are not from Ladakh. So, the company had to send our bikes back to Manali and rent us new bikes from a business in Leh. Weird? Yes, definitely. But do you want something even weirder than that? Here you are: all international roaming to SIM cards or eSIMs for India don’t work in Ladakh. If you want cellular reception, you need to buy a local SIM. Difficult to understand, but this is how it works there.
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 At breakfast, we set a group of friends who wanted to hike up to the Leh Castle, led by our friend Paul, which had already been there. This was a beautiful walk. You will be able to see the pictures below. Upon return, part of the group went to the street market (main bazaar), while I stayed looking at the shops at the commercial road, and later returned to the hotel. At night, after dinner, we all went to sleep early, since we knew that in the next day we would be another day of 255 Km from Leh to Hanle.

Day 11 – 26/07/2025: Leh to Hanle (255 km, 8-9 hours)
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This was the longest day in the trip in terms of riding hours – except for the return day, day 13, in which we did the same road in the reverse direction.

As we got further from Leh and approached Hanle, the landscape became increasingly desertic, desolate and beautiful, with nomadic settlements scattered across the high-altitude desert. At some point we were already in a road in the middle of the desert. At that point, I remembered my thoughts from some of my previous days that we had begun our trip in Manali at 2,050 meters altitude, in a valley with mountains around it, and here we were, in a valley with mountains around it at an altitude of nearly 4,500 meters. It seemed that as the altitude grows, the mountains also grow higher, and during all the trip you are always travelling in valleys. The feeling is that you are riding inside a picture, or a painting... It made me understand a little how small we are in this world, and how the optic illusion of being all the time in valleys makes you forget how much you have climbed in altitude. The world is really something fantastic, and you need such an experience to understand it.

Hanle village, at 4,500 meters, houses the Hanle Gompa, a 400-year-old monastery that serves the scattered Changpa nomad community. The village is also famous for the Indian Astronomical Observatory, taking advantage of the region's clear skies and minimal light pollution. We could see the observatory from the window of our room at the hotel.

Regarding the light pollution, I have to add: every day, hour hotel had electricity from 07:00 in the morning and until we left (I don’t know how much time later on), then a short period of some half-an-hour around 16:00, and then from 19:00 and until 23:00. All other hours – no electric power at all. I am still to know if this happens only because of precarious electrical installations in the city, or if it is for giving the observatory the dark environment that they need.

A group of us decided to go out at 23:30, after the lights are turned off, to explore the sky and take pictures of the stars without flash – using long exposures. We got some interesting pictures. Additionally, one of our friends, Peter, who is a gifted photographer, made some beautiful trials with pictures of some of us on a motorcycle, in which he gave an exposure of 30 seconds, and every 10 seconds he operated a light from a different direction for one second. The results were incredible.
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You can see all the highlights of the day (and the night) in the pictures below.

Day 12 – 27/07/2025: Hanle to Umling La and Return (120 km round trip, 6-8 hours)
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The ultimate day arrived - our assault on Umling La Pass at 5,798 meters, the world's highest motorable pass. We had been waiting all the trip for this day. The 80-kilometer ride from Hanle to the pass crossed some of the most challenging terrain we can encounter, with no road at all, riding in part in the desert, with sections of sand and others of mud, and other section with very narrow paved road, which is 90% made of hairpins (in other words switchbacks), until we get to the top.

NOTE: The map above is as accurate as I could approximate with freehand drawing. Unfortunately, due to the extense riding in the desert, with no road, neither Google Maps, Bing Maps nor Here Maps could draw for me an exact path.

The landscape at this altitude is truly lunar-like, with oxygen levels at just 50% of sea level. The pass, opened to civilian traffic recently, offers views that few humans have ever witnessed. The sense of achievement reaching this altitude on a motorcycle is indescribable. I felt literally on the top of the world and even knowing that the Everest is much higher than this, the feeling for me was like conquering the high peak.
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The return journey to Hanle was done via another mountain pass, called the Photi Là Pass. I remember that it saved us all the difficult way in the desert, and when we finished riding downhill, we were already a single number of kilometers from Hanle. One important thing I can say is that, putting the two mountain passes together, we did approximately 400 switchbacks up and down the passes that day. It was a beautiful ride, but an exhausting one.

Day 13 – 28/07/2025: Hanle to Leh (255 km, 8-9 hours)
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The final day retraced our route through the Changtang Valley back to Leh. This was an opportunity to see that when you look at the same mountains from the opposite direction, you get a completely different picture. Like riding a new road that we hadn’t ridden before.

When Ride the Himalayas plan these expeditions, they think until the last detail. One of these details is the case we get stuck by landslides and the delay propagates until a point that we can’t get back to the last day in time and are in danger of loosing our flights back. They solve this by leaving a buffer day at the end, in Leh, before our farewell dinner.

We did not use the buffer day, and at some point, our guides were considering adding an additional day in our way to Leh to visit a big lake in the region. At the end, reports of bad weather and landslides made them change their minds and travel directly to Leh through the main road, in order to avoid a situation in which people would miss their flights home.

As we approached Leh, the desertic views of Hanle and the high areas stayed behind, and we began seeing more vegetation and population. It is interesting to see as, even inside the high Himalayas, nature changes according to the altitude of the place and the quality of the air around.
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Arriving in Leh completed an epic 13-day journey covering over 1,700 kilometers through some of the world's most challenging and beautiful terrain. We'd conquered the world's highest motorable pass, experienced diverse cultures, and pushed both ourselves and our motorcycles to their limits.

Day 14 – 29/07/2025: Buffer Day in Leh and Farewell Meeting

We used the buffer day to go down again to Leh, which we already know, look for some gifts to take home, and, as expected, some gifts for ourselves as well. I bought myself a shirt commemorating the Umling La conquer, and a shirt for my grandson, featuring the Yak, a local kind of bull or cow. Additionally, some stickers of the Ladakh area for the bike at home.

At the end of the day, at 18:30, we had our Farewell Dinner. At the dinner, Rahul Yadav, Ride the Himalayas CEO, told us all the story of Ride the Himalayas, and how the company has grown from 1 ride per year in 2015 to 13 rides per year in 2025. He also told us about the plans for the future, and this included two new tours: Ride Mongolia and Ride Vietnam. And as the cherry at the top of the cream cake, a courageous plan: promoting in 2027 a ride of 72 days from Delhi to London, passing through 18 countries on the way.
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They also gave us a set of presents: a beautiful winter jacket with the tour logo and name, another dry-fit shirt with a different design and the trophy of the tour: the screen of the Royal Enfield Himalayan containing the sticker that identified the bike with our name.

Conclusions

Aspect #1: the Himalayas

The Manali to Umling La motorcycle journey represents the pinnacle of high-altitude adventure riding. It's a test of endurance, skill, and determination that rewards us with experiences and memories that will definitely last a lifetime. The combination of challenging terrain, rich cultural encounters, and the ultimate achievement of reaching the world's highest motorable pass makes this journey truly epic.

This adventure changes you - not just as a rider, but as a person. The mountains teach humility, the monasteries provide spiritual insights, and the achievement of reaching Umling La creates an unshakeable confidence. For those brave enough to attempt it, this journey represents the ultimate motorcycle adventure on Earth.

The ride was for me like a 14-day meditation session over two wheels. Near the immensity of these mountains, one understands how little he is in comparison to the world we live in. It is a lesson in humility. The scenery is of a strong impact on the soul. It makes you change. I am sure that I will never be the same.

The mountains call us, but they demand respect, preparation, and an unwavering commitment to safety. Riding responsibly, the Himalayas will reward you with experiences beyond imagination.

Aspect #2: Riding Off-road

 I’ve never considered myself an offroad rider. Maximum offroad I have done in my life was some 1-2 Km of trail in a road trip.

Well, I can say that I am an offroad rider today, at the end of this trip. I know how to ride in the most adverse situations, on every kind of terrain: trail, dust, sand, mud, water (crossing rivers) – just bring it to me. I have learnt from very experienced people, not only the staff of Ride the Himalayas, but also my colleagues on the group, who were, with a few exceptions, very experienced offroad riders who gave me good advice.

This doesn’t mean that from now on I will only ride offroad – just the opposite, I will probably be back to my regular road trips with my beloved BMW R1250RT and my even more beloved wife. But for my knowledge as a motorcyclist, and also for my self-confidence as such, going into this trip and being able to finish it was a very important thing.

Aspect #3: The group

Being in a good group is something very important in such a trip. And taking a group of 18 people that come from different cultures, speak different languages, and do different kinds of riding, to make them a homogeneous group, is not an easy task.

Luckily, the July 14th group of Ride the Himalayas was all that I could expect from an excellent group. Already from the 2nd or 3rd day of the trip, we were all brothers and sisters. No fights, no discussions, only good laughs.

I have made some friends in this trip that will be friends for life. I really hope that I will still have the chance to meet some of them in the years I have left, either in their own countries, or for a ride together here in Israel. And I feel blessed that I can feel like this for the people that shared this experience with me.

Aspect #4: Ride the Himalayas – the company

I wrote a review to their Facebook page in which I say: “saying that these guys are extremely professional is not enough and not fair with them – they have found the right combination of being extremely professional and working from the deep of their heart.”

This is exact! The company has made us feel as part of the family during all the trip, already from day one. The owner of the business travelled with us all the way. The leader, the marshal, the sweeper, the photographers, they were like brothers to us during the whole trip. It is very difficult to feel like this for a company that is, all-in-all, guiding you on a ride.

When I took this trip, the thing that I was most afraid was that we would be caught in that traditional combination, in which your guides are more interested to take you to where you can buy things and they can get a commission, than to really show you something. Looking back, it was exactly the opposite – they did not let us spend a dollar anywhere along the way. Everything was handled by them without expenses to us. The only moments in which we bought things by ourselves were the afternoon in Kaza, the rest day and the buffer day in Leh, in which we went by ourselves to the city, without being accompanied by guides. When they say they take responsibility, they really do.

Aspect #5: Logistics and practical advice

1. Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 – this bike is like a goat, in all meanings of the word. On one side, whatever way you give it, it will take it and succeed in it. On the other hand, if you have ever tried to ride a goat, you will probably know: it is hard, and it jumps a lot. Anyway, I enjoyed the bike very much. I don’t think that I would buy one to have at home as my main bike, but for the purpose of this tour this bike was PERFECT! I learned to love it.
2. Gel-padded underpants – The guys who were experienced in offroad brought them. Idiots like me that had no idea, didn’t. I wish I had them, they would have saved me a lot of suffering from the seat of those bikes.
3. Water consumption – it is very important to keep hydrated during the trip. It helps avoid altitude sickness. The staff at Ride the Himalayas every day distributed bottles of water (during all the day), and also electrolytes to put in the water (they also help with the altitude). However, it is not comfortable to take the water in a bag on the bike and drink only in the stops. If drinking is important to you (and it should be), take one of those water backpacks with a rubber straw, which will allow you to drink while you ride.
4. Battery packs are very important for the days in which there is no electricity in the camp or hotel, so take at least two. I’ve taken 3, and that was enough for me.
5. The most painful experience for me in the whole thing was flying with Ethiopian Airlines. This flight was worth for 3 flights: the first, the last, and one more than I should have flown. Let me explain: I have never seen a company which, at the same time, has such excellent quality flights and such an incompetent back-office and logistics. I will tell the whole story in the next sub-items:

 

• On my trip to India: one day before the trip, I discover that the flight which was supposed to be at 10:00 AM appears at the Ethiopian Airlines at 07:30 AM. Nobody contacted me. So I woke up at 03:30 AM and took a cab to the airport, just to discover there that this was a mistake of the airline, and the flight is neither at 10:00 nor at 07:30, but at 09:00. Lost 3 hours of sleep because of this.
• On my return trip: I arrive to the airport in Delhi with my ticket for ET689 to Addis Ababa at 09:35 and for ET414 from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv at 16:35. Upon my arrival, the lady in the counter gives me a hotel voucher. I explain that I don’t need a hotel voucher because my flight leaves two hours afterthe arrival of ET 689. The agent tells me that my flight has been cancelled and I am scheduled for ET 418 that leaves only at 10:35 of the next day. I explain to them that I have to be in TLV before 10:00 on the next day, because I have a event (my father’s 90th birthday) in which I have to be present. She says that there is another flight at 02:20 in the morning, but that she is not managing to put me in this flight – and even shows me in the computer. I tell her to check me and my bag in only until Addis Ababa so that I can solve this there. Arriving in Addis Ababa, I turn to the Service Counter of Ethiopian Airlines. There, the lady tells me that my original flight was rescheduled (advanced) from 16:35 to 03:00 in the previous night. Nobody contacted me to tell me that, but when I left Delhi I had already lost my continuation flight. I explain to her that I need to be before 10:00 in TLV, and request that she puts me on the flight of 02:20. She says that flight does not exist. After 45 minutes of discussion, in which I show her the print-screen from the computer in Delhi, I request to talk to her supervisor. The supervisor comes, she explains to him the problem, he looks at my ticket, and asks “Nobody contacted you?”, for what I answer “No”. Then he says that it is their mistake and they assume the responsibility, and “tells me” that they have a flight at 02:20 that they can place me in... “But that’s exactly what I’ve been asking from her in the last 45 minutes and she says the flight doesn’t exist!”, I say to him, and his answer surprised me even more: “Don’t be mad at her, this flight is overbooked and she cannot tell about it without my authorization.” – he authorizes her and she puts me in the flight that I wanted, probably instead of some other traveller that had not checked in until then.
• But the trouble doesn’t end there: I get to TLV and my luggage hasn’t arrived. The crew at Ben Gurion airport takes the details of the luggage – which at the end arrives almost 48 hours later.

In conclusion, I can say that I will never fly Ethiopian Airlines again, unless I have no other option. I think it is a disgrace that a quality network of airlines like Star Alliance has such a disorganized airline on their lineup.
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Final Conclusion:

​This was a life-changing experience. I have returned from this trip a different person. The experience itself and the friends that I have made there will go with me for life. I can only thank myself that I decided not to be afraid and to give myself the chance to do this. And also, to my wife for all the incentive to do it. I recommend it to all riders that feel they want it and feel they have the strong spirit to overcome any body difficulties.

If you haven't seen it yet, here is the Youtube video that summarizes the whole trip. The video shows what happened, day by day. You can see the scenery, the obstacles, the beauty of the place. 52 minutes of meditation on 2 wheels.

Above is the map of the itinerary. Differently from the previously published itinerary, which began in Tel Aviv, this time it begins in the Northern city of Atlit, for the simple reason that this was the meeting point set by the BMW Motorcycle Club Israel. One might begin the tour from Tel Aviv or any other point and do the same itinerary after that.

Beit Oren Road

Our first segment of the trip is going up the Carmel Mountains through the Carmel Forest, and the best way to do that is the Beit Oren Road, or road 721.

The road to Beit Oren, or Beit Oren Road, is one of the preferred roads by motorcyclists that live in the center/North of Israel.

It is an old twisty road that goes up the Carmel Mountains from its Western side, passes through the Carmel Forrest, Kibbutz Beit Oren and the monument to the dead at the Carmel Forest fire of 2010. The monument keeps the remembrance of the 44 dead in the Carmel Forest fire of 2010, which lasted 4 days - 3 senior police officers, including the Chief of Haifa's police, 36 Israel Prison Service new recruits, and 3 firefighters, among them a 16-year-old volunteer.

It ends at the top of the mountain, at the junction with the road between Haifa and Isfiya/Daliyat El-Carmel.

Once a very old and badly maintained road, it has been renovated and is currently a pleasure to ride. The asphalt is new, and the curves make it a thrilling ride. The views around the road are beautiful, and the forest is completely recovered.

​In the following video you can get a good idea on how it feels to ride there.

Nesher Road

Following the Beit Oren Road, we went down from the Carmel Mountains through their other side, the Eastern side – the Nesher Road.

The Nesher Road begins at the highest point of the city of Haifa and goes downhill at the margin of the city of Nesher, a satellite city to Haifa. It ends near the Checkpost Junction, which gives the access to the Northern Haifa neighborhoods.

Surprisingly (​for me), it was not worse than the Beit Oren road. It offered beautiful curves and a stunning view from the top of the mountain to the Haifa Bay and the Northern neighbourhoods of Haifa.

Check the view and the riding on the video below:

Kiriyat Ata Forest

The Kiriyat Ata Forest is a beautiful park near the Kiriyat Ata neighborhood of Haifa. It's a beautiful forested area that offers a variety of outdoor activities, including hiking, mountain biking, and bird watching.

Usually, due to its proximity to Haifa, this park is very busy, but it is large and has a large number of picnic areas with tables and parking lots.

It is a perfect place for a breakfast or brunch picnic to rest a little from the motorcycle ride. Additionally, riding a motorcycle inside the main road of the forest is a beautiful and calming activity. You can get an idea of the beautiful riding in the video that follows.

A bThe ascent to the Adamit Park and the Arch Cave

We continued riding Northwards, and reached the communities near the border with Lebanon, where we took the New Northern Road, Road 899, from the town of Shlomi, to the East.

After some Kilometers on road 899, we took the Ascent to Adamit park, which is the beginning of Road 8993, the Historical Northern Road. 

The Historical Northern Road is the old road that separated the territories of Lebanon and Israel, passing through all the Israeli border communities. It was already there for many years when the British decided to pave the new Northern Road (Road 899) in 1937 in order to help them suppress the Arab Revolt. Road 8993 begins at the Junction with Road 899 near Adamit and ends at another junction with Road 899 near Matat. At this segment rising from Road 899 to Adamit, the road is a serpentine of hairpins going from sea level to the 400m height of the park. Beautiful scenery can be viewed from this road, from different heights, making it a breathtaking ride. The road offers at some points wide shoulders where you can park the bikes, watch the scenery and take pictures.

​Here is a short video of the way up the road.

Adamit Park and the Arch Cave

I have a chapter about the Adamit Park and the Arch Cave in the previous article - I called it Keshet Cave there, since Keshet is the Hebrew word for Arch. This it the point where you can begin merging this itinerary with the itinerary I have mentioned in my previous article.

Adamit Park is located in the Western Galilee, near the border with Lebanon.

It's part of the Rosh Hanikra Ridge and offers breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape, including Haifa Bay and the Western Galilee.

The park is situated at an elevation of about 400 meters above sea level, providing pleasant breezes and stunning vistas.

The park features several marked trails, including the Terrace Trail, which leads to the Arch Cave (Me'arat HaKeshet), a fascinating cave, which you will soon see, with a narrow strip of rocky land suspended over a void like a hanging bridge.

I have recorded the walk from the parking lot of the park, where you can park your bikes, to the Arch cave, a walking trail of 5 minutes downhill that shows a beautiful scenery of the Western shore of Israel and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Historical Northern Road (Road 8993)

After Adamit Park, We continue our way through the Historical Northern Road.

Road 8993 or the Historical Northern Road is a regional road in northern Israel, located near the Israel-Lebanon border. It runs eastward and is known for its scenic views and proximity to the border.

The road is part of the network of roads in the Upper Galilee region and offers access to several local communities and attractions.

This road has been described in my blog article about the Western Galilee at my website.

It’s proximity to the border with Lebanon is extreme, as you will see marked in this video.

At some points you travel just by the border fence.

During the war, this road (and also road 899, the Northern Road) were completely closed to the general public, and all the communities around the road were evacuated. Road 8993 and Road 899 have been reopened in January 2025 with the end of the war, and while Road 899 is back to its previous state, Road 8993 still shows the effects of the rocket shelling by Hezbollah and the traffic of tanks and combat cars.

At some parts it even gave us the feeling of travelling off-road.

Here are two videos of different parts of the road:

Mount Adir

Mount Adir is one of the highest mountains in the Galilee region of northern Israel, rising to 1,008 meters (3,307 feet) above sea level. It's located between Matat and Kibbutz Sasa and offers stunning views of the Galilee and southern Lebanon. The access is directly from Road 899.

It has an observation deck from which we can get a very good image of the proximity between the communities in Israel around road 8993 and the villages in Lebanon that were over the years transformed in Hezbollah attack bases.

The video below was recorded on Mount Adir, and gives a perfect idea of what is seen from there. We had a guide from the army there who gave us details about what parts of what we see are Israel and what parts are Lebanon.

Koach Fortress - The Fortress of the 28

Following Road 899, we arrive at the end to the Koach Fortress, or Metzudat Koach in Hebrew. Mezudat Koach is also known as Fort of the 28. It is at the very limit between the regions of the Western Galilee and the Upper Galilee.

Previously known as the Nebi Yusha Police station, it was originally built by the British Mandate administration during the 1936-39 Arab revolt.

Touring Israel these days, you will find many places which have a number in their names. Many times these names refer to battles in the Independence war when Israel was attacked by the armies of neighbouring Arab countries in all of its borders, and had to defend themselves or attack back in order to get an advantageous position. This is the case here, and the 28 are the twenty-eight soldiers that died trying to conquer back the Nebi Yusha Police Station, after it was conquered byt the Arabs.

The fort was a strategic observation point overlooking the Hula Valley and the main road to Upper Galilee. It was attacked multiple times by Jewish forces during the 1948 war, resulting in the deaths of 28 Israeli soldiers, the reason for its name.

The fort was eventually captured by the Yiftach Brigade on May 16-17, 1948.

On the grounds of the fortress, there is a memorial monument and a museum that was founded in 2014. The memorial commemorates and names the 28 soldiers who fell in the battle for the fort.

Here is a little of the museum.

Transposing the whole history to current days, it is incredible to think that Israel is still going through the same Arab attacks, and the only difference is the fact that if once the attacks were launched by the neighboring Arab states against a state in the phase of its creation, nowadays they are launched by terror organizations that just took over these states. History goes round, and the fact that they have never accepted Israel's existence and recused to sign a peace treaty with it, caused fanatism to grow inside these countries, and in many cases like Syria, caused the government to fall, or like in Lebanon, caused the country to become a hostage of a terror organization. Talk to any non-Shia Lebanese and they will confirm what I say here.

Road 886

We began travelling South via Road 886, which begins in the Misgav Am juntction with Road 899, passes through Ramot Naftali, Dalton, Alma and other communities, and ends at the junction with Road 89 at Ein Zeitim.

The road is a very nice ride, full of fast, medium and slow curves, with its asphalt in acceptable condition.

At the end of the road we can choose between taking the faster road 89 to the Elifelet Junction, or taking the slower 8900 Road through the Byria Forest to Rosh Pina, and this will probably depend on which direction you will continue from there.

We took road 89 since we are travelling now South, on our way back to the center of the country.

​Here is a bit of the riding there:

Road 90 - Korazim Road

In my previous article for the Western Galilee in the RIDING ISRAEL series, I suggest that you consider sleeping in Safed (Tzefat) for continuing to the Upper Galilee and the Golan, before entering the Lower Galilee area. This time we are going to the Lower Galilee, as part of our way South back home.

From Road 89, At Elifelet Junction we take a right to Road 90 in its Southwards direction.

After some Kilometers, a little after Ami’ad, we will turn left in the direction of Tiberias, continuing on road 90, which at this segment is called the Korazim Road.

Korazim Road is a route that runs through the Korazim Plateau in northern Israel. It connects various historical and archaeological sites, including the ancient village of Chorazin (Korazim), which is mentioned in the Christian Gospels.

The road offers scenic views of the surrounding landscape, including a stunning overview of the Sea of Galilee, locally known as the Kinneret Lake, and has a MUST-STOP point to observe the view at the Mount of Beatitudes.

On our way we will go down from 240 meters height at the area of Ami’ad to -240 meters (yes, 240 meters under sea level) at the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee was once the only water source in the region, and its water was explored by Israel but provided also to Jordan. Nowadays, with the rising of the desalinization technologies in the area, the lake is responsible for only 30% of the drinking water produced in Israel.

The area is also an important tourism area in Israel. The area is already considered as part of the Lower Galilee county, which has its center on the city of Tiberias. There you can find hotels and attractions, and I suggest you refer to the Lower Galilee previous article that I wrote in my series Riding Israel.

Here I finish this article. As I said, if you take a careful study of my previous article on the Western Galilee, you will easily find the points of merging the two itineraries. From here, you have two options: if you are continuing to the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights as I proposed in my series, you can sleep on Tiberias or Safed. If you are going to the South, there are many exits to the South in this region, some of them very beautiful. Look at my Lower Galilee article for a suggestion.

And to end, here is the fully edited video of the day, with all the places marked - 28 minutes.

First semester, a complete stop in everything

Well, during the first semester, I really couldn't post anything. The country was in complete hold, most people were working from home, and going out almost only when necessary, due to the heavy Hezbollah shelling from Lebanon that could arrive at any time in any part of the country. People in Israel, while used to these situations, were not used to the frequency and the heaviness of the shelling, so they preferred to stay home near their security rooms. 

On November 2023, I gave an interview to the Brazilian TV channel Jovem Pan (for those who don't know I am Brazilian and speak Portuguese) showing them the routine of the Israelis when going to the safe room. This explains a little of  what Israel was going through during the first half of 2024, except for the fact that only around 35% of the apartments in Israel have safe rooms. People living in apartments without a safe room had to go to a public shelter or to the building's stairs, an area of the building that is naturally more secure for being in the middle of the buildings and for having a stronger build.

Here is the interview. It is in Portuguese, but I believe that the images explain a lot.

JUNE 2024: Becoming a grandfather

In June 2024, my older daughter gave birth to her first son, and made me and my wife grandparents for the first time. We are still enjoying and getting used to this new status, and enjoying it daily.

Pardon me if I don't publish a picture of my grandson, but since my daughter has decided not to publish herself, for reasons of privacy I will also keep the pictures away from here.

But let me say something very important: this new status of grandfather is one of the most enjoyable things in the world. I am really enjoying it! It's a new status worth for anyone!

JULY 2024: Vacation in Sicily

Well, in the middle of the first semester, my wife and me decided that we would take a vacation in Sicily, Italy, and set this vacation for the best period for me at work, the end of July. Without motorcycles this time, since the driving culture in Sicily is know to be a little wild...

You can find a whole description of the trip in another item in this blog - here is the link.

Regarding this vacation, which was very successful but had its problems, I can ask: what is the only thing that can happen which is worse than the airline that will take you to a vacation cancels all your flights because it stops flying to Israel???

Well, those who answered "The airline cancels half of your flights" are the ones who've got it right. ITA Air took us to Sicily, and 4 days before our return sent an e-mail telling us that our flight back to Tel Aviv was cancelled. After talking to them on the phone we managed to get them taking us in our pre-scheduled flight to Rome, and from there, 24 hours later than our original flight, taking us to Athens. From Athens to Tel Aviv, we needed to book our flight with IsrAir, and Israeli company that was still flying to TLV, for 24 hours after we arrived in Athens (no previous flight available). The cost of the new flight and of the hotels in Rome and Athens were NEVER refunded by ITA Air.

Except for this problem, which we turned into an opportunity to visit Rome and Athens one more time, for one day each, the trip was a success. We met for the first time the places and the culture of Sicily, which is a beautiful place to visit if you just understand where you are going to.

During this trip, I also bought my new gadget, an Insta360 X4 camera that shoots video and pictures in 360 degrees. The first video done with it was the video of this trip, which you can just under the pictures below.

You can see some pictures here in the gallery - click to see them in full size.

The second one was in the area of the Southern Negev desert, passing through different areas from Arad to the Dead Sea and the Yeruham crater. You can see a video of this beautiful tour, also filmed with the Insta360 X4, but this time already edited using a new (for me) editing so​ftware called Davinci Resolve, here below.

The third tour happened only two weeks ago, and was again to the North of the country, at the areas of the Beit Keshet Forest (Churchill Forest), the Byria Forest, and the Kinneret Lake (the Sea of Galilee). This was also a beautiful tour, and since I am more fluid now with the Insta360 X4 and with the Davinci Resolve software, I think I managed to get a very good picture of the whole event in the video below.

And what now???

Well, the year is ending in two weeks, so I don't believe that I will have too much to add until then. And it was crazy enough for me to wish for a boring two weeks now.

So let's end here with my expectations for the next year 2025. This is what I am expecting to happen:

My expectations for the next year:

1. All the hostages (alive and dead ones) will return home.
2. The war will end and there will be peace and quiet.
3. Maybe a peace agreement will be signed with the new Syrian government
4. Many, MANY motorcycle trips and short vacations within Israel
5. AND !!!  Motorcycle tour at the Himalayas !!! Wait for the blog post on this subject during 2025.

And with these optimistic expectations, let's finish this article with this saying: 2024 was not a good year, at least for this region, but maybe it was a necessary year in order to stabilize the region and bring peace and progress. I hope, for all here, and for all the world as well, that 2025 will be A LOT BETTER.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to ALL !!!

The alerts to the rider are given by strong led lights placed on both sides of the motorcycle - in most bikes, they will be placed at the top of the mirrors; in the case of my motorcycle, which has a big dashboard, they were placed at the top of the loudspeakers.

The red lights appearing in the picture on the left are the distance indicator. They turn on if you are too close to an obstacle ahead of you and can also flash in a situation of imminent accident.

The yellow light in the picture on the right, at the left side of the motorcycle, is the light that indicates that something is coming from the back at my left. If something is coming from the back on my right, the right yellow light will turn on.

Well, enough introduction. Let me just finish by saying that from now on Ride Vision will be an integral part of every bike I have in the future.

See the video of my experience riding with it from home to the office.

Catania

We flew from Tel Aviv to Catania with ITA Airlines, via Rome, and arrived in the city around 12 o'clock noon. We had booked a car from the airport from a company called "Easy Car Rentals" through a website called "Economy Bookings". It took around 45 minutes to find the office of Easy Car Rentals, which is not in the airport terminal, but in a building around 200 meters from there. At the office, we discovered that the insurance extension we paid for at Economy Bookings was not at the voucher and is a kind of insurance that in case we have an accident, we have to pay for the damage and then run after Economy Bookings to get our money back (and we all know what happens in those cases). So, we paid for it again at the rental company. So, our first recommendation is: if you ever use Economy Bookings (I won't use them anymore), NEVER pay for the extended insurance, because it is worth nothing.

From the airport, we went to the hotel to have a nap before doing anything, since we were at the airport since 02:30 at night.

During the planning of the trip, I chose the Liberty Hotel in Catania, from booking.com. It was the best hotel of the whole trip. Very recommended. The rooms are spacious, breakfast is excellent, it is a 10-minute walk from the main center of the city and close to the exits of the city to visit other places around by car. And remarkably, I need to say, the service by the staff was first class. They have a slight problem with parking in the area, which is paid from 08:30 to 15:30 and then from 17:00 to 20:00, and you must park only in the blue boxes painted in the street. In most streets where there are blue boxes, there are also yellow boxes, and those are only for residents. Never park there. Usually in the streets there are signs explaining from which hour to which hour the payment is enforced, and there are machines to pay the parking. All hotels in Sicily recommend downloading the Easypark app to pay using the app, but we couldn't install, it I think that because we were using a data-only eSIM. So we had to use the machines. The hotel has an agreement with a paid parking, but it costs 15 Euros per night, so we preferred to park in the streets. At the end, we found at a distance of 5 minutes from the hotel a church which always had free blue parking spaces in front of it - but there the payment continued until 02:00 AM - which was a difference of approximately 1.5 Euros. So we parked there in two of the 3 nights were were there.

In the evening we went to a shopping center called Centro Sicilia, which had some nice shops and restaurants, mostly fast-food, where we had dinner. We also went to a photography shop where I bought my new Insta360 X4 camera.

Mount Etna  and Taormina

In the morning, we took the car and travelled for visiting around. Our destinations were Mount Etna and Taormina. 

​Mount Etna is an active stratovolcano located on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, between the cities of Messina and Catania. It is the highest active volcano in Europe, standing at about 3,357 meters as of recent measurements. Its last eruption was in December 2023.

There was a small and winding road that took us to the base of the volcano. It took us around one hour to arrive to the base of it. There we took a cable-car to arrive to a station which is at a height of  2,000 meters.The cable car doesn't arrive higher than that, and to continue going up we would need either to walk or to take a bus tour to the top. Every one of these options would take 4 hours, so we decided to be satisfied with getting to the point we were. The view from the mountain was very beautiful, but unfortunately the day was not so clear for us to really enjoy it and to show well the view in the pictures and videos.

BTW, breaking news from 16/8/24: at the time I am writing this article, I've just heard that the Etna has erupted again today, and all the flights to Catania are delayed because the airport is at a temporary shutdown. How could I have missed that??? See details, pictures and videos here.

From the Etna, we continued to Taormina.

Taormina is a picturesque town located on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, perched on a hilltop overlooking the Ionian Sea. Known for its stunning views, historical sites, and vibrant cultural scene, Taormina has been a popular tourist destination since the 19th century. I must say, it was very difficult to find a parking place there. We needed to ask for the help of a policeman who guided us on how to get to a parking lot in which we could park for city-pabeautiful andHowever, the village is beautiful and is a must-visit place. The old city is beautiful, the center is thrilling because of all the activity there, and there is a stunning view of the sea from the top of the mountain that shouldn't be missed.

Caltagirone

The next stop, approximately 1 hour away from Siracusa, was Caltagirone.

Caltagirone is a charming town located in the metropolitan district of Catania. It is renowned for its rich history, stunning Baroque architecture, and especially its vibrant ceramic production. Caltagirone’s unique blend of artistic heritage, historical significance, and scenic beauty makes it a fascinating destination to explore. The ceramics arts there have a strong influence of Arab culture, from the time of the Arab control of the city in the Middle Ages. Even the name Caltagirone derives from the Arabic “Qal’at al-Ghiran” which means "Castle of the Jars" and shows the old tradition of the place in pottery. Nowadays, the "Heads of Caltagirone", statues of the heads of men and women with strong Arabic influence, are still made there and famous around the world

We had lunch in the village, walked its streets and even took our chances in climbing some (many) steps of the Scalinata di Santa Maria del Monte, or in English the Santa Maria del Monte staircase. It is a street staircase in which each step is separated from the others by tiles, each step with a unique design - also a living proof of the old pottery tradition. We didn't go up all the way... it is exceptionally long and high, up to the point that I imagined that the reason for the name of the staircase is that people get to the middle of it and, at their last energies, call "Help me, Santa Maria! del Monte". Monte means mountain, so it fits perfectly to the place!

In the evening, we decided to stay at the hotel and skip dinner.

Milazzo and the Aeolian Islands

This morning, we left Catania, with the destination set to Milazzo.

Milazzo is a picturesque coastal town located in the province of Messina, northeastern Sicily, Italy. It is known for its rich history, beautiful landscapes, and strategic location. It was founded by the Greeks in the eighth century BC, Milazzo has a long history and was the site of several important battles, including the Battle of Milazzo in 888 AD. The city attracts a lot of tourism, especially tourism by rich members of the Italian society, yachters, etc., and one of its main attractions are cruises to the Aeolian Islands nearby.

The Aeolian Islands are a chain of islands that were created by the eruptions of volcanos, around 700,000 years ago. There are seven islands, named Lipari, Vulcano, Stromboli, Salina, Panarea, Filicudi and AliOf. From them, the only two that are still active volcanoes are Vulcano and Stromboli.

We left in the morning, and needed to arrive at Milazzo by 12:00 noon, since at 12:30 we had a cruise to the islands of Panarea and Stromboli. We arrived at 11:30 and had time to check in to our hotel for that night, to park the car near the port and to walk to the area of the port from which our cruise was leaving.

At the boat (a fast aeroboat which sails on wings for additional speed) we heard that the Stromboli volcano had erupted some days before our arrival, and therefore the island had been declared as forbidden to tourists, so our only stop would be in Panarea, the smallest and most exclusive island of the chain, in which we would stop for 4 hours. Regarding Stromboli, the boat would sail around it for some minutes, trying to get us a view of the explosions, but would not approach the island too much.

The stop in Panarea was great, although I can say that 4 hours there is too much. We walked the whole inhabited part of the island, looked at the Spa hotels, until we had nowhere else to go anymore, so we sat at a cafe near the port to wait for our boat to come to rescue us, and stayed there for around two hours.

Then the boat came, and we had a really beautiful cruise around the other islands on our way to Stromboli. Stromboli was extremely easy to identify, one sees clouds being created by the steam that came out of the top of the volcano. Nearby Stromboli there is a small island (I would say a small rock) which is called Strombolicchio, and our boat made a turn around it. After that, the boat faced the sun, and we were testimony to a stunning sunset with Stromboli on our left side. The boat stayed near the islands until there was complete dark, trying to give us the chance to see some small eruptions. Unfortunately, Stromboli did not want to cooperate, and the only thing we were able to see was steam coming from distinct parts of the mountain. The picture I present here with Stromboli in eruption was taken from the internet just to give an idea of how it could look, from the site Sicilian Blog.

We arrived back to the hotel around 23:00, and went directly to sleep, since in the next morning we had a 200 Km drive to Palermo. The Hotel Medici in Milazzo was nice, but the room was rather small. Breakfast was excellent, the room was clean, and the location was perfect, at the very center of the city.

Milazzo Castle

In the nmorning,ning we woke up, had breakfast, and checked out of the hotel. With the bags already in the car, we travelled to see the Milazzo Castle.

I could say that Google Maps didn't want to collaborate with this visit, because whatever I did it kept taking me to a dirt-road that I could not cross with the car. I could see the castle at the top of the mountain in front of me, but, but couldn't get there. I am sure that there must be another way to get to it, but I was unable to find it. At the end, we accepted that we were going to see the castle only from far below...

Palermo

We left Milazzo on our way to Palermo. On our way we stopped at Santo Stefano di Camastra, for some rest, and discovered a genuinely nice and authentic village, not so much prepared for tourists, where local people lived the authentic Sicilian lives. We stayed there and walked around for approximately 1/2 hour and continued our way.

Around 13:00 we arrived at Palermo. Our hotel, the Camplus Guest Palermo, had a building that looked a little strange for a hotel, but the room was very comfortable, and the service was particularly good, so we were good with it. Later we discovered that the primary business of that hotel was during the school year, providing rooms for the students at the university nearby. This explained a lot to us. In any case, I do recommend this hotel, since the rooms are comfortable and big, there is a parking plaza nearby in which you can park for free, and the hotel is a 15-minute walk from the center of Palermo and a 5-minute drive from the exit of the city. As I said, we received particularly good service there too. The only thing was the breakfast, which was a little sparse and without many options.

We got set at the hotel and walked to the center of the city. On the way to there, we found a street market and had lunch at one of the restaurants of the market. I can't say the meal was a good one, but it was enough to give us strength until the evening.

We spent the afternoon walking Via Maqueda, the main commercial street of the city. It is a place for whoever wants to buy some gifts or trivial things, but not a real shopping street. We walked to the Teatro Massimo (Massimo Theater), and then went back. The street is long, so one can spend hours there. And this is the place to find where to have a meal, not the market we've been to for lunch.

West Sicily

In the next morning, we left the hotel for our day touring West Sicily. We had a plan to visit five places: Castellamare del Golfo, Marsala, Agrigento, Corleone and Monreale, before coming back to Palermo. But this will take almost 8 hours of driving and wouldn't leave any time to visit anywhere. So, Lily and I decided to cut Marsala and Corleone from the list, and visit Castellamare del Golfo, Agrigento and Monreale. We knew that, at least in the case of Marsala, we would be missing a beautiful place, but it was too far and out of the way.

​Castellamare del Golfo

As we approached Castellamare del Golfo, the panorama began to change. The road brought us beautiful views of fields and the sea. 

Castellammare del Golfo is a charming town and municipality located in the Trapani Province of Sicily, Italy. The name translates to “Sea Fortress on the Gulf,” which refers to the medieval fortress situated in its harbor. The village has many picturesque streets with beautiful old buildings, very well conserved, and a marina called "Cala Marina". The main street through which we walked is called Corso Garibaldi, and if once this was a fishermen village, today the village still lives from fishing, alongside tourism.

Agrigento

We had one target in Agrigento: the Valle dei Templi, or in English, the Temple Valley. After a long journey from Castellamare del Golfo, we arrived at the city, which is quite big compared with ohter places we've been, followed the signs and ended up in an archaeological museum. That was not exactly what we wanted, and after walking a little in its backyard, looking at the temples from far away, and seeing how empty that museum was, we understood we had to be in the wrong place. So we went back to the car, and I decided that I would drive in the direction of the temples that I had seen and try my luck.

After some Kilometers, I see a new sign pointing to the direction of the Temples Valley, and saw I was going in the right direction I just continued a little more and saw the entrance of the parking lot for the valley.

After parking the car and getting our tickets, we began walking the trail and arrived at the Templo de Giunone or Juno Temple. This one is also called (as you will find in Wikipedia) the Hera Temple. After some admiration and some pictures, we continued through the trail which is then called the "Via Sacra". We passed the Greek walls and the Byzantine arcosolia, and arrived to the Temple of Concordia. Both these temples are from around 450-460 BC, and the Concordia Temple is conserved in an impressive way.

Additionally, to these temples, there are also the Heracles Temple, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the temple of Hephaestus (Vulcan), the Temple of Asclepius, and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, but all of them are in worse condition.

Monreale

We did all our way back to Monreale, where we admired the small streets, the city center, and the incredible view of Palermo and the sea  from the top of the mountain. At the end of the day, we went again to Maqueda Street, and to a restaurant that we had found the previous day after our dinner and decided to leave it for the next night. This was our first really good meal in Sicily. The name of the restaurant was Mastunicola.

Palermo

In the next morning, we took some time for another visit to the center of Palermo. We actually did two things there: a guided visit to the interior of the Teatro Massimo, which is very impressive, and a round tour of about 45 minutes with the "Trenino", the touristic train of Palermo, which took us through three different areas of the city that we did not know.

The Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele is an opera house and opera company located on the Piazza Verdi in Palermo, Sicily. It was dedicated to King Victor Emanuel II. It is the biggest in Italy, and one of the largest of Europe (at the time of its inauguration, it was - with its area of 7730 m2 - the third largest opera house in Europe after the Palais Garnier in Paris, and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna), renowned for its perfect acoustics. It was designed by an architect from Palermo, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, in 1861, and its construction took 22 years, during which Basile died, leaving the end of the construction to be led by his son Ernesto Basile. You will be able to hear all the explanation in the short video in the continuation.

The "Trenino" is a city mini train that works like those tourism open double-decker buses that you see in most of the touristic cities nowadays. It is a hop-on/hop-off touristic carrier, and it works in conjunction with the buses, meaning that it doesn't matter with which one you buy the tickets, you can use both buses and trains until midnight of the same day. Since they do different itineraries, they can take a tourist to see most of the city.

We were intending to travel to Cefalù (pronounced Tche-fa-lu) after the train, so after it stopped in two out of four stations, the third station was really close to our hotel, and this drove us to get out of the train there and take the car to continue to Cefaù.

Cefalù

Cefalù was a place that we missed on our way from Milazzo to Palermo, but later we read about it. It was founded on the 4th Century BC by the Greeks, and today its population doesn't surpass the 14,000 inhabitants. The village is small, but it is a main attraction in the touristic scene of Sicily.

Actually, Cefalù came to be the best visit that we did during this whole trip to Sicily. The village is very lively, full of people (mainly tourists like us). We arrived there at the end of the morning, found a parking place very quickly and near the sea (something rare), and went first of all to eat a light lunch by the sea.

After that, we began walking in the direction of the old city, where we found plenty of small streets to explore. The streets are nowadays full of shops, and usually over the shops and in between them there are houses where the people live. It is really beautiful to walk around there.

At some point we arrived at the Piazza del Duomo, the plaza in which the main cathedral of Cefalù is located. The cathedral is called "Cattedrale di Cefalù" is a beautiful building, at the end of the Piazza. The place was dizzling with the movement of the tourists, but we managed to identify a group of people coming in uniforms and to understand they were a kind of a band. Then we understood they were going to have some kind of festivity... but what?

It comes out that we arrived there at the second day of the "Festa del Santissimo Salvatore della Trasfigurazione", the main feast of Cefaù that is celebrated every year between 2-6 of August. The feast includes band parades, horse parades, flags, and much more. The whole local population goes out to the streets to participate, and with them the tourists. I am including below some short videos of the parades, but part of them is also included in the full trip video.

One thing that struck us in Sicily, and we saw it in Catania, Palermo, and now also in Cefalù, was somthing that seems to be a trend in fast food on the whole island. They call it Brioche con Gelato, and this is exactly what it is: a brioche cut in the middle with some balls of icecream inside it. To me it seemed like a very weird combination, but people seemed to enjoy it much. Anyway, since I am going through a period without sugar or carbohidrates, I did not try it.

Talking about food, in Cefalù I had the only dinner in which I willingly broke my diet, dividng an excellent pizza with my wife.

The return to Catania Airport

At this point of the trip, we already knew that our flight back to Tel Aviv had been cancelled, due to the threats made by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack Israel with missiles in the following days. On these situations, first thing airlines do is to cancel all flights, and there is minimum care for their customers. They see that as an opportunity to stay with the customers' money without providing the service. I have never seen an airline cancel a flight to NY because there is a forecast of a snowstorm in around one week from that day. But to cancel a flight to TLV because there is a threat that there will be some kind of shelling in around one week, that is usual. The point is that nothing happened until now, 2 weeks after the date of the flight, and now I am suing ITA Air to get the additional expenses they forced me to have back.

Well, so on August 1st in the evening they sent me an email telling me that our August 3rd flight was cancelled. So, in the morning of August 2nd I called them, and we agreed on the following:

1. We would take our previously scheduled flight from Catania to Rome on August 3rd
2. Since they didn't have a place for us on their flight to Athens on August 3rd, they would put us on their flight to Athens on August 4th. 
3. We would buy from any company that is flying to Israel a ticket to fly to Tel Aviv
4. All expenses on me (flight and hotels in both cities), they have NO RESPONSIBILITY AT ALL over the cancellation of flight. I didn't agree with that but decided to fight this at a later moment.

This week, after two weeks without any attack from any other, when there is no difference between July 30th and August 14th in terms of security of flights to Israel, I am beginning my fight with them to get the expenses back.

Sicilia Outlet Village

So, in the morning we left our hotel in Palermo in order to return to the Catania Airport, return the car and fly to Rome.

On our way, we stopped at the Sicilia Outlet Village, an open outlet shopping center with shops of the main Italian brands. The place is very big and looks like a real village. There I found the Ferrari shop and bought a Scuderia Ferrari shirt for me, while my wife bought a Ferrari shirt and a Ferrari hat for our newborn grandson. There were some other less representative purchases there as well. The picture here shows the place where we had an excellent lunch there.

The return of the car to the rental company was just as difficult as getting the car - it was impossible to find the entrance to the returning car parking lot. After around 20 minutes and some 4 laps around the parking lot, I finally found it and returned it. When checking the car, the guy of the company insisted that there was a new scratch on the metal of the wheel of the car that wasn't there before. Two things bugged me: that nothing had happened to cause the scratch, and also that this was the ONLY wheel that he checked, as if he knew he would find something there. But I couldn't discuss it with him because the scratch was there, so I left it.

Inside Catania airport, chaos was complete. First, the gates are in the same room that everybody enters the terminal, separated only by temporary frames and the security machines. The echo in the room was incredible. Nothing could be heard, we needed to speak one on the ear of the other. A number of delayed flights (including ours, delayed by 35 minutes) made the noise even higher because there were many more people in the gates area than was planned to support. Representatives of the airlines were speaking in their microphones all the time to call/guide the people to their delayed flights, but due to the noise, nobody could understand a word of what they were saying. At the end, we almost lost our flight due to the chaos, but we managed to make it inside the plane in time.

ROME

Well, the good part of the cancellation of the flight to Israel was that we had gained one day in Rome and one day in Athens. So, we decided to take advantage of every second in these cities.

Still back in the last days in Palermo, we booked our hotels for these two days:

1. For Rome, we booked the Hotel de Petris, a boutique hotel in the center of Rome, around 200m from the Fontana di Trevis. We booked an exceedingly small room, but it seems to me that the hotel has larger rooms than I booked. Our room was good for 1 night, but if we were for 3-4 nights in Rome, I would be looking for a larger room. But I must say that the location was crucial, the breakfast was very good, and the service was excellent in any way you can imagine.
2. For Athens, we would be returning for the third time to the Acropolis Select hotel, my favorite hotel in Athens. Nothing beats this hotel. Very spacious rooms, first class service, excellent breakfast and location, just 200m from the Acropolis. They also have a terrace bar that proved to be excellent.

But let's go down to Rome. Since Lily and me had already been there, and both seen the Colosseum and the Vatican, and since it was a Sunday, a day where everybody can go in for free in all the tourist attractions (meaning there would be lots of people there), we decided to leave these two places and focus on all the piazzas around our hotel. We spent a great day walking around the city and enjoyed every minute of it. We visited Fontana di Trevi, Piazza d'Espagna, Via del Corso, Piazza del Parlamento, Piazza de la Rotonda, Piazza Navona, Piazza Venezia, and then back to the Via del Corso.

Anyway, in the evening, when our taxi took us to the airport to get our plane to Athens, its way passed through the Colosseum, so we managed to have a quick glitch of it.

Athens

We arrived in Athens at 01:00 at night and travelled directly to the hotel to get some sleep.

In the morning, we walked through the Plaka to a department store called Attica, which my wife wanted to see. We had both visited Athens twice in the past, so all the tourist attractions were already known, and we did not need to care about visiting them. 

The visit to the department store was good. Lily found some shoes that she was looking for and I could seat and wait because, differently from other big stores everywhere in the world, Attica has in every floor, near the escalators, what I called the "area for the abandoned husbands", some four armchairs for you to sit and rest, with wifi reception and a desk with wireless and wires to charge your mobile.

From there we went to Ermou St., another commercial street, but we bought nothing this time. Then we returned to the Plaka, where we went straight to eat lunch at the Estia Restaurant where we had a great dinner in 2022 when we visited Athens for the last time.

In the afternoon, we were already very tired because of all the walking & flying of the last days, and the heat. So we returned to the hotel and asked to rent a room for the next 4 hours. The lady in the reception said the hotel is full, but they have in the building just beside them a room that they can rent for day use for 30 Euros to us. Lily went to see the room with a hotel employee and accepted the deal. It was an apartment!!! 

We stayed in the room until 19:00, the 4 hours they gave us, and then went up to the terrace bar, where we stayed until the time that the taxi came to take us to the airport. Our flight with Israair took off on time, and around 05:00 in the morning we landed in Tel Aviv.

So, to finalize this article, some conclusions about Sicily:

1. Driving in Sicily
There is only one rule when driving in Sicily: THERE IS NO LAW. 
People will never respect the speed limits. Overtaking over continuous lines is a daily simple operation. When you get to a crossing, and you need to turn left, first look to the left to see if nobody is coming too close to you, and if you have the time, then block the left lane with your car, then look to the right and wait until nobody is too close to join the lane; if you wait until both sides are free you will stay there forever.

2. Catania and Palermo...
Are two necessary places to stay. Both of them are not remarkably interesting, and very badly conserved, but they are the basis, the central places for all your visits around. You will not see much of the island if you don't stay for a few days in these two places. But don't lose too much time trying to find attractions there.

3. The smaller the village, the more interesting it will be.
I don't think I need to evolve on this item.

4. Taormina, Caltagirone, Milazzo, Monreale and Cefalù
Don't miss these places, especially Cefalù. If you haven't been to all of them, you haven't enjoyed Sicily.

5. Eating in Sicily
If you like and eat pasta, you will have no problems. In case you are carbohydrates-free or gluten-free, it is more difficult, especially in Catania, because you will mostly find horse meat or swordfish.

6. Some technology that might help:

eSIM - in most cases (unless you are European, they have the lowest roaming charges in the world), or your phone doesn't support eSIM, you can get mobile eSIMs for less than USD 5 from Mobimatter.com. You can get a 50% cashback (up to USD5) on your first purchase by using my referral code HELIO98050. Search for Italy or Europe at the site and choose the eSIM that suits you better.

Parking -  park only in the blue spots. There will always be a machine or a Tabak shop somewhere that can sell you the parking tickets, but sometimes you will have to walk. If you can, install the Easypark application on your phone from your home, it will help you pay the parking digitally without walking. We tried to install the app there, but it wouldn't work on my Oneplus 10 Pro or in my wife's Samsung S23, because we were using data-only SIMs and not our original number in order to receive their text messages.

Calls to real phones -  some unexpected things may happen that will force you to call real phone numbers. This will be difficult if you are using a data-only eSIM. I needed to call real numbers to solve problems with the car rental company and with ITA Air. So, I've found an app called Yolla, which makes VOIP SIP calls to real phone numbers for almost no money. I made 2 calls to the rental company and 3 calls to ITA Air, staying with the last for a lengthy conversation, and from the USD4 that I deposited in the app I still have USD 3.77 available.

​Well, this is it. See you on the next trip.

Ah!!! Last thing before I go! If you are interested, please find below the video of the full trip, my first experience with the newly acquired Insta360 X4.