The Crime Traveller

Phew!  It’s been a whirlwind few days as our visit to Israel has crammed as much activity as anyone can handle (while lugging a 5 and 7 year old along).

We’ve taken in a Bat-Mitzvah with family in Tel Aviv followed by fantastic visits with family in Ranana.  I continue to be astounded by the quality of children’s parks throughout Israel and Ranana was no exception.  Its MASSIVE “Ranana Park” features a huge pond stocked with turtles, fish, ducks and pelicans and playfully decorated with the occasional sea monster as well.  In addition to the variety of playground equipment, it boasts an amphitheatre and mini-zoo – a wonderful place to spend an afternoon.

We have also spent two incredible days touring Jerusalem.  After making our way through a maze of streets, we parked at the brand new Mamilla Mall. It’s an incredible experience to literally walk backwards in time as you can follow nearly a straight line from the posh modern luxury of Mamilla into the boisterous crammed pathways of the Old City shuk (market) as you approach the ancient stones of the Kotel (Western or Wailing Wall).

On our first day we participated in a guided tour of the Kotel Tunnels.  These amazing excavations reveal the full length of the wall both across and underground — a site rarely viewed by the millions who throng the better known Western Wall Plaze each year.  What people commonly associate with the Kotel is in fact only approximately 12% of its total length and only about 1/3 of its height.  What lies beneath the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City is a fascinating warren of interconnected cisterns, pathways, aqueducts and arches.

How do you top a day spent touching 2000 years of history?  How about strolling over a block to the City of David archaeological park where you can step back another millennium and see how Jerusalem appeared roughly 1000 years before Jesus ever showed up. Here we took in an excellent 3-D movie depicting the area’s growth and change over the last 3000 years and then descended deep into the excavated tunnels.  The highlight is a 600 metre splash through the inky blackness of an ancient aqueduct.  My 5 yr old initially panicked at the chest high water but settled after a few minutes as the water became shallower and then begged the guide to “go again!” when we finally emerged on the far side near the Shiloah spring in the Jerusalem’s Arab Silwan neighbourhood.

It’s been indescribeable to experience so many of Jerusalem’s ancient sites on the eve and day of Tisha Be’av — the historic day of national Jewish mourning when both the 1st and 2nd Temples were destroyed.  As our guide for the Kotel tunnel tours pointed out: you would be hard pressed to name another nation on earth today who still annually mourn the tragic events of 2500 years ago.

We have returned to our home base in Modiin and are hoping (praying?) for the kids to get an early night to bed as we depart for Masada tomorrow morning at 7:30am.

Before departing half-way around the world to Israel with a 5 and 7 year old on tow, one of my biggest concern was how the kids would handle the jet lag.  I had visions of angry exhausted children angrily bawling their eyes out as they were dragged from place to place in a sleepy stupor.

The reality has been quite the opposite – though it brings its own challenges.  Somehow my kids have concluded that, although it is 1:00am in Israel, that barely makes it dinner time back home and so they should be allowed free roam of the house to play as they see fit.  My perfectly logic retort to them that they would have no energy to enjoy our daytime outings, has not only fallen on deaf ears but been proven implausibly wrong.  This morning, at by 8:00am the kids had eaten a chipper breakfast and were singing camp songs in the car as we drove the short distance from our home in Modiin to nearby Latrun.

Our first stop at Latrun was a visit to the Israeli Army Armored Corps memorial.  This former Jordanian police station and military base was captured by Israel and now houses a wide array of Israeli tanks from 1948 relics all the way to the most modern 2010 version of Israel’s marquee Merkava battle tank.  Honestly, although I myself was very interested in visiting the site, I had predicted the kids would last approximately fifteen minutes before the 35c heat sent them packing.

Wrong again.

The girls viewed the massive site as the world’s largest playground and spent nearly two hours climbing each and every tank in the impressive collection before we had to drag them away for lunch.

Our afternoon was spent at nearby Mini Israel — a 15 acre recreation of major sites and cities across Israel all at 1/25th scale.  We posed in front of miniature office buildings, watched tiny people pray at a miniature Kotel, and laughed at the miniature Knesset (Parliament) parking lot which had been cleverly filled with tiny Lamborghinis and Ferraris as a sideways nod to some of the ‘perks’ that can come with politics.  Who needs

Leaving Mini Israel, it was clear the adults were wiped out, yet somehow the kids continue to draw on hidden energy reserves. 

Click here for a slideshow of our pictures.

I’ll admit to some real hesitation before my wife and I decided to pack up our daughters (ages 7 and 5) and haul them half-way across the world to spend nearly a month in Israel.  Today, as the metal door slid shut on our Lufthansa flight to Israel via Frankfurt, those doubts were front and centre.  Amazingly, the kids managed to sleep for large portions of the flight and behaved like angels for the entire trip (which is more than I can say for the two adults on either side of us who actually chose to confront a frazzled mother over the ‘conduct’ of her infant who – surprise! – cried a lot).

I can’t yet decide whether I was comforted or disconcerted by the extraordinary security flights to Israel attract from Frankfurt.  An entirely separate gate in a distant corner of the airport has its own security personnel who seem to think that asking passengers to take their shoes off is just foreplay for the main event when they briskly run their hands across every inch of your body during a post-metal detector pat-down.  At first, I thought I had been randomly singled out for secondary but as I waited for the results of the explosive-materials test on my camera bag to resolve, I watched passenger after passenger undergo the same clinical examination.  Although I understand with absolute clarity that this is being done for my own protection, as a Jew I can’t help but feel a little uneasy as I’m instructed in a combination of German and sign-language to unzip my pants so that the guard can check the waist band of my underwear.  And yet, there is something inherently captivating and uplifting hearing our German flight crew collect the remains of dozens of kosher meals as they wish passengers ”shalom” upon our disembarking the aircraft in Tel Aviv.  I’ve had the privilege of flying to a great many countries over the years, yet landing in Israel remains the only conclusion to a flight that consistently and routinely results in spontaneous applause from a flight full of passengers.

After a comfortable cab ride to the town of Modiin, we took very quick stock of our new home for the next month before hopping in the Ford Mondeo to brave Israel’s streets in our first Israeli outing to…wait for it…the Azrieli Mall!  We stocked up on milk, water, yogurts, bread, etc. and enjoyed some pizza in a food court comprised entirely of kosher fast-food joints.  I felt moderately Israeli after getting honked at for not running a red (but I made up for it by ignoring a cross-walk)…and, the car still has 1 out of 2 mirrors attached.  Bonus! We did fail to coral the elusive peanut butter in the grocery store though…does this country have some sort of national allergy to the legume?

I was immediately reminded, even in the sleepy suburban planned community of Modiin where we’re staying, that even on the best of days, the ‘security situation’ in Israel impacts otherwise mundane daily activities.  Our trip to the local mall included a cursory search of the trunk of our car before we entered the parking lot followed by metal detectors and bag searches at the door.  It also takes a little while getting used to politely shuffling by an M16 assault rifle hanging idly off the shoulder of an 18 year old female soldier.

Now, with my thoroughly jet-lagged family in bed, I’m looking forward to orienting ourselves better to our new surroundings in the morning.

This 'new math' stuff leaves travellers scratching their heads.

I was never great in math but here are some numbers that every traveller should be concerned about.

‘Tax Dude” on the FlyerTalk Forums was looking to take advantage of  a recent Westjet seat sale.  Before pulling the trigger, he figured he’d check what Air Canada was offering for the same flight.  Not surprisingly, Air Canada’s non-sale rate was substantially higher.  Then Tax Dude got cute by going one step further and pricing out the same ticket using Aeroplan rewards.

It turns out that after burning 15,000 Aeroplan points, your “free” Aeroplan seat ends up costing $2.27 MORE than it would to simply save your points and buy the seat outright on Westjet.

Check out Tax Dude’s breakdown here.

As a jaded technophile who has been carrying a blackberry since the original “blueberry” days, it takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to the purported world-altering power of Web 2.0 and Social Media constructs.  But today, I became a parishioner at the Church of Twitter and I now believe (Can I get a “Believe!” brothers?!) that social media has changed the way (smart) companies do business.

Allow me to explain.

Three weeks ago I made the classic Judeo-Canadian pilgrimage along the 401 from Toronto to Montreal for passover. My sister and brother-in-law, with their 2-yr old son in tow, chose a more dignified form of travel — they flew. Upon meeting up in Montreal, with my kids happily tucked away at my aunt’s house, I happily loaned my sister our van to make it easier for them to travel back and forth from their room at Montreal’s downtown Westin hotel to our family’s home in suburban Cote St. Luc.

On the second day of this simple arrangement, my brother-in-law called me in a mix of rage and embarrassment. The valet at the Westin, to whom he had entrusted my van the night before, had somehow managed to smash the car into a concrete pillar in an empty parking lot. We’re not talking nicks and scrapes here. The bumper was mangled. The rear tail-light was shattered. The power tail-gate no longer locked. And, two of the rear motion sensors — yes, the very sensors that, in combination with my rear-view camera, are supposed to make this kind of accident impossible — were busted.

A few words about my brother-in-law. He’s not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to hard-nosed negotiation. He’s an accountant by training but a pit-bull by nature. It just so happens, his current job basically boils down to managing bankrupt luxury hotels that have gone into receivership so he knows a thing or two about hotel customer service. He was not amused. He quickly received the assurance of the Westin that the repair costs would be covered (this turned out to be a considerable $3000+ figure). His two-night stay was immediately comped. He wasn’t satisfied. Mortified by the inconvenience he had inadvertently contributed to, he demanded compensation for my trouble. That’s when he hit a roadblock.

Over the course of numerous e-mails and telephone calls, my tough-as-nails brother-in-law unleashed a flurry of fury upon the Westin’s management earning a promise of a measly 5000 points in the hotel’s  parent affinity program: Starwood Preferred Guest. To put it into perspective, that’s worth roughly half a night at a mid-level Starwood hotel. I resigned myself to being left unsatisfied and did what comes naturally to a travel writer – I bitched about it on twitter.

Within 20 minutes I received a notification: “StarwoodBuzz is following you on twitter.” 30 minutes after that I received a Direct Message over twitter asking me to contact them to discuss my dissatisfaction. Within the hour I’m taking a call from Starwood’s corporate executive office in White Plains, New York. We chat about how I’m planning to be in Israel this summer and will be spending some time by the Dead Sea. Five minutes after that, I have a promise for 14,000 Starwood points — enough for a two night stay at Le Meridien Dead Sea.

The corporate lesson to be learned here should be taught at every business school around the world: a company that is able to communicate with its customers has a massive competitive advantage. Starwood’s investment in social media would be impressive in its own right but what really leverages the power of that investment is the company’s commitment to customer satisfaction. Listening to what your clients have to say on twitter is undoubtedly valuable but being able to respond in a timely fashion to concerns in the twitterverse is what will separate those companies who are simply jumping on the social media bandwagon from the companies that really “get it.”

Kudos to Starwood. Long live twitter.