It has been a long couple of days
of travel. I had to wake up at 3:30 on
Memorial Day in order to make my 5:45 flight out of Madison. Made it there and through security just in
time for the quick 23 minute flight down to Chicago. I followed that up with a long 6 hour layover
at O’Hare, where I finally met up with the rest of my group around 10:30. I had lunch with one of my fellow travelers around 11:00 (a good and
overpriced chicken and avocado sandwich, plus a slightly dry sea salt chocolate
chip cookie). Then it was on our flight
to Toronto, which was delayed due to a faulty door indicator. After about a 20 minute wait, we finally got
in the air.
During this flight, I finally
opened the novel I brought along for the trip: the newly published Michael
Crichton work Dragon Teeth.
Unfortunately, I think I’m going to finish it quite early on the trip,
since it is a quick read. Thankfully I
have plenty of other reading material on my Amazon Fire. Since we were a little later getting out of
Chicago, our connection in Toronto was only slightly rushed. I ran ahead to check on my seat (I wanted to
move up, but was told I could not since it was an Air Canada flight and my
ticket was purchased through United.
That makes sense.) Herein lies my
problem with travelling in groups, something I’m not used to. I didn’t tell them I was going ahead, so
apparently they waited for me after getting through customs. This made them some of the last to get
through the additional security for the flight to Tel Aviv.
My plan had been to sleep most of
the flight. Instead, I did not sleep a
wink. I simply could not get
comfortable. So I ended up watching four
movies in amongst various attempts to sleep.
The new ones I watched were The Founder, which was good though it made
me really dislike Ray Kroc, and Assassin’s Creed, which I had avoided given the
bad reviews, and even at free it wasn’t worth it.
One really interesting thing was
the number of Orthodox, Hasidic, Jewish men.
It was especially interesting to watch them pray. I had seen some before, mostly in airports,
but never so many (which was not surprising, of course).
And so we landed in Tel Aviv, 10:00
local, 2:00 am at home. It took awhile
for all of us to get through customs, be we finally got on the road to our
first stop: Tel Beer Sheba. Tel is the
word for a fortified mound, similar to the Greek acropolis. By the way, on the way we stopped for lunch
at a roadside stop with McDonalds and a coffee shop with sandwiches. Of course, I did not go to McDonalds. I had a pretty good chicken sandwich with
fresh whole grain wheat bread, aioli, red onions, tomatoes, arugula, and a huge
chunk of red pepper (I took one bite with it and then threw the rest of the
pepper away). This was our first stop
since it was where Abraham settled. It’s
a pretty cool site, you can even walk down into the cistern which had been
built deep below the town.
Main front gate (with well below)
Path to second gate
Modern Beer Sheba in background
Looking toward Negev Desert
Looking into the cistern
It was also here that I realized
that, while I thought I was prepared to be here, there are still something
things that surprise me even though they shouldn’t. The first was the camels we saw around Tel
Beer Sheva. Of course I knew there were
camels here, but they still surprised me.
The other was the minarets and the call to prayer. Again, duh, but still surprising.
So then we made our way to
Jerusalem. It’s interesting to drive
past the many different regions in Israel, many with walls or fences around
them. We are staying these first few
nights at a convent at St. Peter in Gallicantu.
After settling in, we had our first Mass together. What an amazing view from this spot, looking
at Old Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives!
I was especially struck when the first word my side said during Evening
Prayer was: “Jerusalem!” I’m here!
After that, we walked to
dinner. The place we were supposed to go
to was closed, because, as we didn’t know until we got here, it is just the beginning
of Ramadan. This is why we have had to
since alter some of our plans for visits.
So we were recommended a certain restaurant, where they made us some
delicious salads of various kinds, hummus and pita bread, and the main course
of a very good curry chicken, potatoes, and cooked vegetables. Then they topped it off with chocolate cupcakes
with a chocolate insert. All very good.
On the way back, it was after
sunset, which means the Muslims celebrate.
In the picture below, all of the colored lights were actually blinking,
and they are sporadically setting off fireworks as I type this.
Well, I’m tired, so I’m going to
end this here. Tomorrow should be a busy
and interesting day as we tour some of Jerusalem.
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