After an uneventfull (that's a good thing) 14 1/2 hour flight, we arrived at Ben Gurion airport at around 2:30 pm local time. I'm writing now at 11:05 pm and I have no idea why we are awake! We only slept for about 2 to 3 hours on the plane. ...must be the excitement.
Arriving 3 hours ahead of flight time seems like it only really needs to be 2 hours. El Al has you check in at the gate 1 hour prior to departure where they load you onto a bus and drive you (under police escort) way out to a very remote terminal. The plane seemed like a fairly new 777 with seat-back entertainment for everyone! Lots of better than average plane food and movies made the flight seem not longer than 9 hours!!! lol
The tour co. was waiting for us in baggage and proceeded to take the 4 of us to a private 20 passenger mini bus that we will have for the duration of our trip! Our guide Ophir, seems really great. A former attorney who lived in Calif. for 5 years while his wife was attending Stanford Univ., he is very into history and is also very good with the kids.
We took a quick tour of Tel Aviv, checked into The Dan Panorama, showered, met our friends from New York, went to the Tel Aviv port and a brief visit to Joffa and then off to dinner.
A funny thing happened on the way to dinner! I was not too happy when I saw "Oriental dinner" on the agenda for this evening. I don't think I came to Israel for Chinese food!!! Well, it turns out that "Oriental" has a different meaning here! "Oriental" is what they call the local food!! Whew! Dinner at Maganda Restaurant near carmel market was excellent and exactly what I wanted for our first meal here! :)
...off to bed then a fun filled day tomorrow!
1 comment:
Sounds and looks like a great start to the trip.
Oriental threw me off too when we were there.
Be sure to eat a Falafal stand. Really really good and very inexpensive too.
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