Hunting for jewels and spices

September 4th, 2009 by | Country: Israel | No Comments »

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In the past two weeks, I’ve been on a scavenger hunt to find jewels, spices, and SHINY GOLD.  As I walk through the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, the smell of curry and cumin wafts by my nose, causing me to observe the spices closely.  At the quarter, there are bags and bags of spices in bright red, orange, brown, and green – all the names of colors I can identify.  While looking at the spices is part of the experience, smelling them is a must as each of them have their own unique scent.

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It’s absolutely hard not to miss men proudly displaying their jewels with shiny gold and gems – turquoise, amethyst, and sapphire.  These men are desperate for your willingness to be greedy enough to buy a huge bag full of jewels.  They will plead with you by putting the jewelry in your hand and will continue to lower the price until give an OK to buy them.  Tourists need to be prepared not to be gullible by the information about the jewels provided by the sales people.  However, many tourists should be intelligent enough to know that some of the stuff is just bunch of dummies.  Fortunately, I found a beautiful, genuine ring made with Roman glass for an incredible deal thanks to my negotiation skills which I have built up over the years from my traveling experiences.

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Scarves also dominate the scenes of the quarters, both Jewish and Arabic.  They’re admirably beautiful and come in a wide range of colors, including bright pink, purples, blues, and greens.  Leather sandals are a fad in Israel too.

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Aside from the garments, hookahs are greatly abundant at the market.  Hookahs are the strangest creatures I have seen!  They’re those little shiny  machines with hoses on the sides for people to suck on.  They also seem dangerous as when people use them, smoke comes out of their mouth – that says that hookahs are perhaps just as harmful as cigarettes.

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This is a hard-not-to-miss experience in Jerusalem and even in the Middle East.  The experiences are exactly what I’ve seen in the movies, such as Aladdin.

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