Arrival in Tel Aviv Day 1

We arrived in Tel Aviv today. The flight was full of groups of people going to Israel for pilgrimages, and luckily the large US Airways Airbus A330 was to capacity. Luckily for me, I was assigned a seat in the back of the plane, and that while there were only 3 seats across, there was a seat in between, giving us more room.

The service was not stellar by any means. In fact, while serving breakfast, it seemed as if they had gotten a late start, as they were literally throwing egg breakfast sandwiches and orders of french toast at people to get them served before everyone was required to take their seats the last 30 minutes of the flight (per Israel rules).

We arrived at the airport, and I managed to get just a couple of hours of sleep here and there on the plane. Ben Gurion Airport is beautiful and modern, and was very easy to navigate. Once through passport control and customs, we picked up our luggage and met our tour operator, Johnny, and boarded our coach.

From the airport, we made our way to Bethlehem. Since we arrived about 40 minutes early, the tour guide took us through a part of Jerusalem, stopping at the Israeli Knesset, taking pictures near a large rose garden, and then hopping back on the bus.

We again stopped a second time to be able to take pictures of Jerusalem and the Kidron Valley. We got a large group shot of people overlooking the skyline in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is very beautiful, with lots of cedar and olive trees everywhere. It's also WAY more hilly than I ever imagined, and by hilly I mean that the hills are very steep, making for a very dramatic landscape. It's breathtaking!

Back on the bus, we made our way to Bethlehem, which i in Palestine. The Intercontinental is a large complex of rooms and levels. It was a little disturbing to have to go through some security checkpoints, but I felt safe the whole time. There are a lot of walls up through the city which are somewhat unfortunate and unsightly. We'll be getting more details about that tomorrow.

We made it into the hotel, and I still have to get the internet wifi set up to be able to update posts. Perhaps tomorrow. Who knows. It was interesting to hear the muslim call to prayer from the minaret this evening before dinner, and was just about as interesting hearing random shots of gunfire not to far away. I have no idea where it came from but it was a little unnerving.

In all, though, what a beautiful start to the trip, and look forward to visiting more places tomorrow!