I need a haircut!
Got up bright and early to catch a fligt from TLV to Eilat in the very south of israel. Again israel security was intense and again, they had much trouble believing the person on my passport was me! and everyone had to wait a while for me. Then on top of all that, they pull everyone aside, look deep in your eyes and ask you a barage of questions. It feels like ho I would assume it would feel like getting questioned by the CIA or one of those NCIS type shows on television. Really crazy.
Boarded our uneventful flight on a tiny plane down to eilat where we were transferred to the border with Jordan. This border was really not like any other border I had been at before I thnk. Thoug I don't really remember African borders too much. There's a long strip of no man's land between the two countries, in the middle of a desert wasteland that you walk through with barbed wire fences on all sides, millitary men with ak-47's and hummers about.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Holy Land
3-9-10
Shalom,
Arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel today. I'm on a trip with my dad and his church to the middle east. My dad has always wanted to go and had wanted to take my mom, but she decided that if she was going to take time off from work, she'd rather sip pina coladas on a beach than take a sort of high intensity course. Well, she didn't end up on the beach, but is instead sipping martinis with her mom, sisters, and brothers in Tucson. B/c of that I was invited by my dad to come on this trip. This trip is going to be a complete 180 from my SE asia trip. It's in a group and very organized and quite fancy. It was a huge difference today arriving in Tel Aviv all tired from the the long flights and just following a group to a private bus and then to a fancy hotel (and by fancy I'm not talking running water and warm showers that I talked about in Asia, but fancy as in state of the art fitness centre, business centre with fancy snacks and drinks for the taking, hi speed computers, flat screen tvs, and the beatles are currently blaring on the sound system) and then having a fancy meal. Instead of having to figure out how to get public transport to the backpacker area and then trying to find a cheap room and then walking the streets for a meal. Much, much different.
So we started the day yesterday, early in the morning leaving Estes for DIA and then onto Philly. I had hoped to meet up with Sara Bates in Philly b/c we had a decent layover, but it just didn't work out. Arrived in TLV about 3:30pm today. The Israelis have tight security for obvious reasons, and I had a bit of trouble getting into the country. Right of the plane they just do a check of passports and the guy that checked mine didn't quite believe me that my passport was mine, so he had to quiz me on everything, but let me through. At immigration where they stamp your passport, the women did not believe at all that the person on my passport was me. She kept looking at me and looking back at it and said she saw no resemblance. Of course I was much younger and now have very long hair instead of a carol cut, but still. So she asked for a second ID. Gave her my drivers license which has a picture taken of me after Lucas and I had stayed up 2 straight nights in a row cramming for our commercial driver's license, so I look terrible, and again, no resemblance she said. She asked for more, so I pulled out my ACI ID. Again, she didn't believe it. It had been about 15 minutes by now (my dad in front of me took about 20 seconds), but I was finally able to convince her with credit cards, Scuba PADI ID, my brochure for travel with the gate1 group, with reciting everything from my passport for her, and giving her a detailed itinerary of my trip to let me in.
TLV was pretty nasty today in terms of weather. It looked like a really terrible smog in LA or inversion in Boise. We're told it's not pollution but dust and sand in the air from a big sand storm in Saudi Arabia. TLV looks just like any modern east coast city to me, or at least what we saw of it which was the highways and the area around our fancy hotel.
We had a really tasty middle eastern type family style meal. Tomer, who I met in the Philippines, came over for dinner and to visit. He's such a nice guy and dad really enjoyed talking with him b/c he knows the old testament well and is big into musicals.
Tomorrow we are heading to Petra, Jordan. This is kinda an interesting story and my father and I may have been cited as rebels on the trip a bit for it. The trip, way back when, had mentioned having a day extension to go to Petra. That didn't pan out b/c Arlene, the group leader, had thought the day would be to rough and long. Now what is considered rough and long for the retired folk of Estes Park would be considered an easy day in my books according to my travel in SE asia. Well, dad really wanted to go, so I did some research on it, and found out it would be still possible to do a 1 day trip to Petra from TLV. So we approached, pretty much last minute, Arlene about it. She wasn't too thrilled about it, but agreed we could do it and just miss the normal tour of TLV with the rest of the group. Before we left, 2 other people had decided to join us. After meeting at DIA, another 2 had joined the group. So now we have 6 going tomorrow on our rebel rousing trip. It should be great though b/c Petra is one of the wonders of the architectual world and a definite highlight of the region. We leave tomorrow by airplane about 6:00am from TLV flying to Eilat. We then cross the border and head up to Petra. We return back to TLV around 10. Both my dad and I are really looking forward to it.
Shalom,
Arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel today. I'm on a trip with my dad and his church to the middle east. My dad has always wanted to go and had wanted to take my mom, but she decided that if she was going to take time off from work, she'd rather sip pina coladas on a beach than take a sort of high intensity course. Well, she didn't end up on the beach, but is instead sipping martinis with her mom, sisters, and brothers in Tucson. B/c of that I was invited by my dad to come on this trip. This trip is going to be a complete 180 from my SE asia trip. It's in a group and very organized and quite fancy. It was a huge difference today arriving in Tel Aviv all tired from the the long flights and just following a group to a private bus and then to a fancy hotel (and by fancy I'm not talking running water and warm showers that I talked about in Asia, but fancy as in state of the art fitness centre, business centre with fancy snacks and drinks for the taking, hi speed computers, flat screen tvs, and the beatles are currently blaring on the sound system) and then having a fancy meal. Instead of having to figure out how to get public transport to the backpacker area and then trying to find a cheap room and then walking the streets for a meal. Much, much different.
So we started the day yesterday, early in the morning leaving Estes for DIA and then onto Philly. I had hoped to meet up with Sara Bates in Philly b/c we had a decent layover, but it just didn't work out. Arrived in TLV about 3:30pm today. The Israelis have tight security for obvious reasons, and I had a bit of trouble getting into the country. Right of the plane they just do a check of passports and the guy that checked mine didn't quite believe me that my passport was mine, so he had to quiz me on everything, but let me through. At immigration where they stamp your passport, the women did not believe at all that the person on my passport was me. She kept looking at me and looking back at it and said she saw no resemblance. Of course I was much younger and now have very long hair instead of a carol cut, but still. So she asked for a second ID. Gave her my drivers license which has a picture taken of me after Lucas and I had stayed up 2 straight nights in a row cramming for our commercial driver's license, so I look terrible, and again, no resemblance she said. She asked for more, so I pulled out my ACI ID. Again, she didn't believe it. It had been about 15 minutes by now (my dad in front of me took about 20 seconds), but I was finally able to convince her with credit cards, Scuba PADI ID, my brochure for travel with the gate1 group, with reciting everything from my passport for her, and giving her a detailed itinerary of my trip to let me in.
TLV was pretty nasty today in terms of weather. It looked like a really terrible smog in LA or inversion in Boise. We're told it's not pollution but dust and sand in the air from a big sand storm in Saudi Arabia. TLV looks just like any modern east coast city to me, or at least what we saw of it which was the highways and the area around our fancy hotel.
We had a really tasty middle eastern type family style meal. Tomer, who I met in the Philippines, came over for dinner and to visit. He's such a nice guy and dad really enjoyed talking with him b/c he knows the old testament well and is big into musicals.
Tomorrow we are heading to Petra, Jordan. This is kinda an interesting story and my father and I may have been cited as rebels on the trip a bit for it. The trip, way back when, had mentioned having a day extension to go to Petra. That didn't pan out b/c Arlene, the group leader, had thought the day would be to rough and long. Now what is considered rough and long for the retired folk of Estes Park would be considered an easy day in my books according to my travel in SE asia. Well, dad really wanted to go, so I did some research on it, and found out it would be still possible to do a 1 day trip to Petra from TLV. So we approached, pretty much last minute, Arlene about it. She wasn't too thrilled about it, but agreed we could do it and just miss the normal tour of TLV with the rest of the group. Before we left, 2 other people had decided to join us. After meeting at DIA, another 2 had joined the group. So now we have 6 going tomorrow on our rebel rousing trip. It should be great though b/c Petra is one of the wonders of the architectual world and a definite highlight of the region. We leave tomorrow by airplane about 6:00am from TLV flying to Eilat. We then cross the border and head up to Petra. We return back to TLV around 10. Both my dad and I are really looking forward to it.
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