Israel

I've been gone for a while visiting in Israel. That's right. Way over in Israel. Its the farthest I've traveled or ever will travel. It was ten time zones away. I assume there are twenty-four total in the world, so I was pretty much halfway around the world.

Started from Portland and a short little 2.5 hour jaunt to Denver. Then a god awful 12 hour flight to Munich. Then 4.5 hours to Tel Aviv.

But we made it. I was a little verklempt about getting through security. I don't blame them for being a little paranoid. But that turned out working out alright. There was a huge line to where we had to show passports. There were several people in little boxes that you could go to. Rather than a line for each, it was more like a mob that slowly surged forward.

It took about fifteen minutes to get to the front. The guy I talked to seemed pretty serious. He asked what I was there for, etc. I thought if I really was there for bad reasons, I would probably just lie. But I found out later that they don't really care about the answers. They've been trained to look at a person's reactions when answering to see if they are stressed when they answer. Apparently I did OK because I made it through.

Then it was getting our bags, which went surprisingly quickly and we met our tour guide, taken to the bus and on to the hotel in Tel Aviv.

Tell Aviv is a modern city right on the Mediterranean. It is really beautiful at night. At least the touristy part is. We had an orientation meeting then a short bus trip to the city. On the way we saw a big "Trump - Making Israel Great Again" sign. Yes. I'm serious.

We actually ended up in Jaffa which is right next to Tel Aviv. We saw a statue of a whale. (Jaffa used to be called Joppa and where Jonah sailed from before meeting his whale.) We saw several meetings and some cool night time views of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean.

Day 1 -  Done.