Sep 25 – Flight to Israel

We are flying El Al, the official Israeli airline, to Tel Aviv this morning.  This airline is considered one of the safest in the world and we can see why.  Early this morning the taxi took us to the airport and dropped us off at what is a terminal exclusive to El Al.  There was an outside waiting room/building where we waited until the doors opened at exactly 3 hours prior to departure time. 

We had to show our tickets to get into the terminal and there we got into a line where we waited to get our passports checked.  From there we went to the screening counter where we were asked a number of questions regarding our travel and our luggage.  Everything was then tagged with a security screening tag. Then it was off to the ticket counter to check in and drop off our checked luggage.  Then passport control…where it looked like he must have checked every passport stamp in our passport…took a while.  Then our hand luggage underwent the usual security screening...but with a pretty through inspection of a lot of the items that they took out of our carryon.  Fortunately, we passed so we could then head to the waiting area. 

The waiting area had bathrooms, a small duty-free shop, and a small café where we got a light breakfast.  This area is totally separated from all the other terminals in the airport.  El Al passengers are kept totally separate from other passengers…no killing time by wandering the concourses and terminals.

Eventually a bus came to pick us up and drop us off at our aircraft.  The flight itself was comfortable and we were given a light snack. 

First sight of Israel from the plane.

We were met inside by a greeter who helped us to a much shorter passport checkpoint.  We were through quite quickly, but the luggage took quite a while to come out.  But at least everything showed up this time.

We were at our hotel late afternoon.  It is rather hot and humid but not unbearably so.  Turns out our hotel is only about a block from a very long beach.  Downside…today is the Jewish New Years.  The start of a 3-day holiday.  And almost everything is closed.  Our hotel has a buffet available, but it is $150 per person.  That is awfully expensive in general.  And we only want a light dinner, so it is pretty steep.  So we decided to walk down the beach to see if there are some snack/light dinner options.  Most of the restaurants are at big hotels and they are fully booked for the holiday.  We eventually found an ice cream shop that had crepes so we both opted for a crepe for dinner.  But they had nothing savory…so it was dessert for dinner. 

The weather is lovely with a light breeze off the water.  Could get used to this.