| Our travel went well but it is a very long flight
(10.5 hrs from Newark. We arrived in Tel-Aviv at 5:30 PM on Sunday.
Having left the house on Saturday at 3 PM, we literally lost a full
day. After arriving at Ben Gurion airport, we met our guide (Doron
Bookshtein), got on our tour bus and headed for our first night in
Israel at the Dan Panorama hotel in Tel Aviv. It is a modern hotel
that faces out to the Mediterranean Sea. We ate dinner together as a
group and then Patty and I took a short hike around the immediate area
including a short walk around near the coast. Very nice! The next
morning we rose early and had a huge feast of a breakfast before packing
up and getting on the tour bus at 8 AM sharp. From there we traveled
just south to the old city of Jaffa. Our guide, Doron, took us to a
beautiful park that includes the St. Peter's church. We learned how the
modern Jews in Israel got their start. That is, they began as a small
group in Jaffa, then added a few houses in the surrounding area and then
finally, in the 1800's founded the adjacent city of Tel Aviv. It really
is the home of modern Jewish Israel. It is a bustling city. We then
boarded the bus and headed for (next column) |
Israeli Independence Hall where we saw videos and
learned about the time in May 1948 when the British left and Israel
began as a "state" (not country!). Following this, we again boarded the
bus and headed north to the now excavated city of
Caesarea. There is a phenomenal Roman city that has been dug out
and it was an original sea port for the Mideastern region. Lots of
photos. We then went for a falafel lunch and headed up the road to
Mount Carmel. Here our guide described the story of Elijah to us.
The history of Israel is obviously wrapped up with bible stories.
Everywhere we go, that is what we heard. In Caesarea, it was all about
Jonah and the "fish". The views from
Mount Carmel are breathtaking.
There is a nearby Israeli air base where F16 jets take off and fly
noisily over Mount Carmel. Our tours finally ended up in Nahala, where
we saw the graves of Moshe Dayan and that of Israel's astronaut (Ilan
Ramon) who died in the Columbia shuttle explosion (2003). Our day
ended with a drive to the east, across Galilee for our second night stay
at a Kibbutz called Nof Ginosar. |
