It’s better to look back in life and say I’m glad I did that instead of I wish I did that!

Well here goes. I have had many requests to write about my trip to Israel and it seems the excuses and delays have come to an end!

The only thing I would change about my trip was the flight schedule. I agonized about buying plane tickets because I didn’t want to do a 12 hour flight. I have a tailbone issue and sitting for extended time periods is very painful. We decided to do 3 flights. A short, a medium and a long! There is just no short way to fly across the ocean.

If I had to do it again I would recommend taking an extra day to fly to Israel as well as to fly home. By breaking up the trip that way you aren’t going 36 hours without sleep! We flew from Detroit to Philadelphia to Munich. When we landed in Munich we found that terminal F which is the Israeli terminal is totally isolated from the airport. It wasn’t connected to the main terminal and was controlled by the Israelis. There were guards up above with rifles and the security was incredible. We realized that the Israeli people take very seriously the protection of their country. They scrutinize your passport and question you extensively before you even go through any scanners. You then board a bus that takes you directly to the plane. It was another 4 hour flight to Tel Aviv from Munich , Germany. We left Detroit at 1pm and arrived the next day in Tel Aviv at 330 in the afternoon. There is a 7 hour time difference. Israel is 7 hours ahead of us.

We met our tour guide at the airport and after collecting our luggage, proceeded to drive to our hotel. It was supposed to be a 40 minute drive but took almost 2 hours with traffic. It was in a city called Natanya. Our hotel was on the beautiful Mediterranean sea. We were exhausted when we arrived and had to plan on leaving early the next morning to start our tour.

Our tour included 2 meals a day in our hotel. That first night we had to choose 2 items from the menu. It was my first experience with real Mediterranean food. I know many people love it but I am not a fan! My daughter Anne and I split chicken schnitzel and fried eggplant. The chicken was good and we ate it several times on our trip. The eggplant however was not good and it was quite disgusting. I didn’t see any eggplant in it at all!

You can use American money freely in Israel. If you use cash they will give you Israeli shekels in return. Credit cards are welcome in most places. You just need to know if there are foreign transaction fees. I used a card that didn’t have fees. We also found out there is no coffee cream! Only hot milk.

We were told prior to our trip that we didn’t have to worry about any language barriers. They told us that everyone spoke English. They absolutely don’t! It was difficult at times to communicate. They speak broken English at best. We became very good at pointing at things and trying to communicate without words!

Stay tuned for day 1 of our tour!