It is now after midnight in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv. Just over 24 hours ago I was leaving JFK to embark on a journey to the Middle East, and now I'm sitting in a hostel one block away from the Mediterranean beach. It's absolutely gorgeous by the way.
The story of the how I spent my hours in between is pretty ridiculous and will serve as a nice opening to this travelogue. Leaving JFK was pretty straight forward, no real delays or any hiccups. However, once we took off a small child of about three years began screaming. He didn't stop...for an hour...and it was in Hindi! That aside the flight went well and landed in Frankfurt, Germany. The layover was excruciating though. A 5 hour wait is generally not that bad, but add in the fact that it was 5am Germany time and nothing in the airport was open, and that I couldn't leave. Plus I was to the point of exhaustion but couldn't fall asleep! Oh and the airport made me go through security 3 times, because third times a charm right?
Flying to Israel is crazy too. In Frankfurt my bags were inspected and scanned, I walked through a metal detector, AND was wanded. They even wanded the bottoms of my feet. I don't recall much of the flight to Tel Aviv, as I slept through major parts of it. At passport control in the airport I was interrogated for a minutes. "Why are you traveling alone?", "Have you been to Israel before?", "Why don't you fly home from Israel?", and other generally pointless questions. They let me through after about half an hour.
Oh and they call the airport Tel Aviv, but it is not in the city. It's actually in the town of Lod which 9 miles outside of the city. I took the train from the airport into the city, which was quite the experience. The first stop after I got on was Tel Aviv Ha Haganah("the defense" in Hebrew), aptly titled as 15 soldiers got on board and 5 of them were carrying M4s. Soldiers are everywhere in this country; the streets, the trains, cars, buses, etc. A huge number of them are women too, something that I've never seen anywhere else. From the train station I walked to the hostel and that was a lot further than I thought. I got lost a couple of times on the way too, thankfully so many Israelis speak English.
After much walking, and sweating(its hot as hell here), I finally made it to the hostel and met up with my cousin Marnie. We went to the beach for a bit and got dinner at a really cool American style bar/restaurant looking at the Mediterranean. Marnie thoroughly enjoyed eating bacon, which is non-existent in Egypt haha. After dinner we walked around the city for awhile, it really is beautiful. Getting here pretty much sucked, but it was well worth it and this has been a great start to the trip.
The story of the how I spent my hours in between is pretty ridiculous and will serve as a nice opening to this travelogue. Leaving JFK was pretty straight forward, no real delays or any hiccups. However, once we took off a small child of about three years began screaming. He didn't stop...for an hour...and it was in Hindi! That aside the flight went well and landed in Frankfurt, Germany. The layover was excruciating though. A 5 hour wait is generally not that bad, but add in the fact that it was 5am Germany time and nothing in the airport was open, and that I couldn't leave. Plus I was to the point of exhaustion but couldn't fall asleep! Oh and the airport made me go through security 3 times, because third times a charm right?
Flying to Israel is crazy too. In Frankfurt my bags were inspected and scanned, I walked through a metal detector, AND was wanded. They even wanded the bottoms of my feet. I don't recall much of the flight to Tel Aviv, as I slept through major parts of it. At passport control in the airport I was interrogated for a minutes. "Why are you traveling alone?", "Have you been to Israel before?", "Why don't you fly home from Israel?", and other generally pointless questions. They let me through after about half an hour.
Oh and they call the airport Tel Aviv, but it is not in the city. It's actually in the town of Lod which 9 miles outside of the city. I took the train from the airport into the city, which was quite the experience. The first stop after I got on was Tel Aviv Ha Haganah("the defense" in Hebrew), aptly titled as 15 soldiers got on board and 5 of them were carrying M4s. Soldiers are everywhere in this country; the streets, the trains, cars, buses, etc. A huge number of them are women too, something that I've never seen anywhere else. From the train station I walked to the hostel and that was a lot further than I thought. I got lost a couple of times on the way too, thankfully so many Israelis speak English.
After much walking, and sweating(its hot as hell here), I finally made it to the hostel and met up with my cousin Marnie. We went to the beach for a bit and got dinner at a really cool American style bar/restaurant looking at the Mediterranean. Marnie thoroughly enjoyed eating bacon, which is non-existent in Egypt haha. After dinner we walked around the city for awhile, it really is beautiful. Getting here pretty much sucked, but it was well worth it and this has been a great start to the trip.
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