Traveling from Rome to Amman, reaching Tel Aviv after interesting flights in an Embraer195 /175. Brazillian made. I spent the entire day with a Brazilian/Canadian / Israeli passenger also doing the same flights, was lovely having company. He apparently hadn’t spoken English for quite some time. I also enjoyed speaking with him, it is always nice being able to communicate!
After boarding and waiting on the tarmac for about an hour on the Amman/ Tel Aviv sector in the adjoining seat was a chap from the UN. I was interested to hear he had met Helen Clarke a former NZ Prime minister. As well as David Shearer, another well respected New Zealand MP. Enjoyed chatting to him while we waited for clearance to take off. He was a most interesting guy living in Bethlehem and commuting.
The trip itself was only half an hour, but a rather bumpy and windblown one. Eventually, getting to bed around 2.30 am after going to the wrong hotel and wandering the 3-400 meters in the deserted downtown streets to the right one. I was assured the streets were very safe, but I did notice graffiti, building sites like dumps, so not terribly comforting.
A lovely hotel when I eventually made it.
Tel Aviv looks like a large messy, building site. with the occasional finished project! The beach, however, was glorious. Shops were closed today for a holiday which meant I couldn’t get any more shekels. Think I may have stuffed up one try at the ATM, waiting to see if the money came out going to some other lucky person!
The closed shops also meant I couldn’t get an adapter for toothbrush/ iPad. Luckily the hotel had a USB charger I can use to charge the power pack. For some reason, the iPad doesn’t charge on the hotel USB, but it will feed off the power pack??? So screen time is limited at the moment.