Since everyone else is doing it...

Here is the play-by play from my notes of all the things we did and didn't do in Israel.
Most of the time the trip is half the fun of getting somewhere for Martin and me. On this trip we spent two days trying to get to Israel, well Frankfurt really. We ended up finally at Dulles on Saturday evening and not getting on any flights to Frankfurt.

(Let me interject with an opinion on Dulles. It is quite possibly the longest airport I have ever had the misfortune to walk through. While I love the uniqueness that is the Mobile Lounge and I am appreciative of a Potbelly Sandwiches in the terminal, the place is a nightmare for connectors. No quick way to get anywhere since moving sidewalks aren't de rigeur in the D.C. area.)

So instead of sleeping the airport we rented a wonderfully cheap rental car and drove to our friend Jim's house to meet his family and sleep in their guest room. They have a lovely room very near Mount Vernon. Since most European flights don't leave until the afternoon we had a leisurely morning and then strolled around George Washington's home for an hour or two before we headed back to Dulles to maybe get on a flight. Martin took a coach seat and I was in Business and we were off to Frankfurt. Both of us probably didn't sleep more than 2 hours on the flight until it was time to land and make a mad dash through the airport to see if we could catch an early fight to Tel Aviv.

The Frankfurt airport is labrinthine where Dulles is a straight edge. We wiggled and twisted through the various smoking areas and lounge chairs until we found a check-in counter without leaving security. We got Business Class to TLV on Lufthansa.

Arrival in TLV was typical and speedy. We stopped at the tourist counter to see if they could recommend a hotel. The guy suggested a place and called to hold a room for us. We got our rental car, a Mazda 3 and headed to find our hotel somewhere near the beach. We planned to meet Martin's cousin Moshe and his family for dinner. After driving around and around and forgetting where exactly we were going we finally found the right apartment building. The food! We had burekas, hummus, avocado, Israeli salad... I could go on but I won't.

The next morning we met Martin's other cousin Dovi and his wife for breakfast. Yummy labaneh cheese and eggs and lemonade with na-na (mint). We shopped for a few minutes at the Azraeli Centre mall and I bought some jewelry at Michal Negrin and Martin needed socks so the men went looking for those. After this adventure we decided to pack things up and head North to Haifa! We stopped at Zichron Yaakov on the drive.

Let me preface this part by saying that Haifa is not an easy town to get around in. Our first day in Haifa we got up and took the Carmelite down the hill in an attempt to see the German Colony and the Bahai gardens. The entire vist we saw neither because the rain was a deluge and it was not fun even with an umbrella. So we drove to Ein Hod artist village instead and looked at the artist colony and then drove down to the sea to see the Atlit Immigration Camp. The camp was very interesting and our guide was very friendly. When we returned to our hotel we walked in and saw that James & Rose had arrived from Jordan. We had sushi for dinner and it was quite tasty.

We tried again the next to day to get to the Bahai gardens. No dice. So with rain pouring down we decided to pack up and head south to the Negev and Mitspe Ramon. We stopped again in Ein Hod to buy a pretty painting and a gorgeous leather vase. I'll have to post a pic of that because it is unique. We stopped at Caesarea for a tour and lunch. I had kebab. We walked around the ancient theatre and took the very cool video tour. We also drove down to the aqueduct and wandered around.

The drive to Mitspe Ramon was long but not horrible. We arrived at night so we saw nothing of the desert. We did however, see a lot of rain and hail and occasionally ice on the road. We were staying at the only place in town, the lovely Ramon Inn. This place is the high end hotel but they have no elevators. We were on the top floor :)

The first full day in the desert we drove to Sde Boker and saw David Ben- Gurion's grave and his hut at the kibbutz. We were surrounded by soldiers at both places which was fun. We also wanted to hike through the Ein Avdat wadi but all the rain had made the usual trickle into a raging river. We settled on looking at the waterfall and gorge from the lookout point. On our way back to Mitspe Ramon we stopped at Avdat, an ancient ruin of a Nabatean city on the Old Spice Route. It was full of arches and caves and we were the only people there. It sits on a plateau with a grand view of the desert below.

The final day of our trip and it was a long one. We hiked around the crater at Mitspe Ramon, visited and alpaca and goat farm ( where James made a donnkey friend), had lunch at the McDonalds, drove by Ben Gurion University in Beersheva and drove James & rose to their hotel in Jerusalem. We wish we had more time to spend in Jerusalem but the way our trip was scheduled we couldn't see much of anything there since it was Saturday and everything was pretty much closed. We left James and Rose and continued to Bat Yam to have a last dinner with relatives.

After dinner we drove to Ben Gurion airport (very Ben-Gurion heavy trip, this one). We met up with Dovi who works for El Al and we discovered that flights had been cancelled due to ice on the runway in Newark and that people from those flights had taken seats on formerly open flight to Atlanta with Delta. We were basically thinking that we were stuck until we were given, at the very last minute, crew seats on El Al to Toronto/Chicago. This means we sat in flight attendant seats for the entire trip except for meal services. By far the weirdest way to fly, but the best food I've ever had in a coach seat!