The pilgrimage to Israel was a group trip organized through our parish. The sales guy is a Christian from the area, and it was designed as a religious trip. We stayed together in hotels and rode together on a bus. We had our own bus driver and guide. The guide was very informative and pleasant to listen to. The driver was amazingly competent at backing that long bus into tiny spaces.
I have a new slogan for slopes and suchlike: "Slowly, slowly!" By which he meant calmly even the oldest of us would be able to walk the cobblestones up the hill to the church. And except one or two times someone was too tired to make the climb/descent and rested in the bus, we all did.
This post will be about our arrival in the land of Israel. (Also at this part the nation of Israel, but we also went in parts that are considered to be the property of the area called Palestine.)
It was a three-legged flight, first to Houston, then through the night to Frankfurt, then to Tel Aviv. The flight was mostly on Lufthansa. I am very impressed with how attentive the cabin crews are about keeping their passengers hydrated!
We lost about 8 hours of time while going east. This is usual for flying from the Americas to the Old World.
When we arrived, we sought out the gentleman in the baggage area with the sign for our group, gathered our bags, and went outside to the bus area. There are a LOT of buses. All of them have signs for their group. Ours had not gotten a slot in the row along the sidewalk, but they switched it and another bus around and got us on board and rolling. It was late afternoon local time. Also known as "rush hour" so there was traffic en route to our first hotel, in Nazareth.
This was the sign board in the lobby area. It was lighted, and I think that bit on the left is a time and temperature web gizmo. We were issued our keys and headed to our room.
They had the standard power-saving device we've seen in Europe. The electricity in the room only works when the guest is there to enjoy it. (Forget hanging something wet in the bathroom and going out for several hours, as the air doesn't circulate when you're gone.)
The opening to the nice-sized shower. It had a rain shower (default) and a hand shower. During our days in this hotel I learned to be very careful about placement of the hand shower while the water was running. The first morning, I set it wrong and accidentally made a monster sized puddle on the bathroom floor--the watered traveled along the glass wall to the opening at the top of the door and dribbled down to the tile floor. Oops!
One of the trips through the buffet that night. The salad bar was amazing! It had yogurt, beyaz panir (mild white cheese), hummus and olives twice a day. I admit it, there were two salad trips before the main one. This plate shows the roasted eggplant salad that I particularly liked, and also the cold dressed sweet potatoes and the tomato-cucumber-sweet pepper salad which were also good.
At this hotel, they had reserved tables together for each group staying there, with paper table tents, and they would move the reserved area around from one meal to the next while doing their floor planning. Some members of our group were somewhat rattled by this, so I will mention that it proved a good plan to arrive in the dining area and locate the tables before snagging the cup of coffee-milk and a plate of food to complicate walking around.
The hotel has a large pool area and outdoor bar, but we were too busy and, at the end of each day, too tired to explore them. The days were filled. And your blogger, being out of practice at keeping busy to a scheduled plan all day, was not up for partying into the small hours in the evenings.
Dinner was the end of the long day, which had begun on Monday early and finished on Tuesday evening.
This post was edited for spelling and to mention that the bus driver impressed everyone with his skill at handling the vehicle.
