Friday, June 29, 2012

Day 1




    Well if you got this far, you passed the first test: Figured out how to get your daily fix of Scott and Inger while we're traveling in Israel. It's on "Oy Vey-cation!" The Official blogspot of, you guessed it, Scott and his beautiful shiksa wife Inger. Better have a Jewish dictionary handy, because we're not in Kansas anymore! (I just have to be careful. Mom and Dad will be following this too). Hehe!!!

     Gregg picked us up at 5 Thursday morning. So far, so good! So afraid we were going to miss our connecting flight at JFK on El Al airlines. Yeah, That's right. El Al! Oozies in the terminal. How cool is that! Well it would have been cool if they had 'em. But alas, the only guns we saw while flying were the biceps of our flight stewards. They were 18" cold! Believe me when I tell you, if they politely asked you to fasten your seatbelt . . . you fastened your seatbelt.



     My seat was in the last row. Inger was 33 rows away. Knowing I couldn't survive 10 hours w/o her, another sister agreed to switch. It was interesting that on the plane many devout Jews would come to the back, put on their prayer shawl, tefillin (look it up hehe!) and wrap leather strips around their arm while reading from Deuteronomy. At times there were a dozen men there doing this. They did this two to three times each for around 20 minutes. My grandmother told me about this so I was looking for it.

     Upon leaving the airport in Tel Aviv, we were bused to Jerusalem and immediately started touring. Saw the city walls (which were quite impressive)! Just outside the walls and across the small valley is the garden of Gethsemane. Beautiful but small. The Mount of Olives, where the Garden is located either on, or rt next to, is now the largest cemetary in Israel. But, it is just a mound or hill, nothing bigger like I was expecting. We tour them both tomorrow, but from the road The Garden looked no bigger than an acre.



     Our tour took us around the walls of Jerusalem where we saw the valley of Hinnom, probably no more than 50-75 feet below the walls. (Picture below) It's amazing that everything is so close. In fact we are told it would only take you 1-1/4 hrs to drive across all of Israel and 6 hours to drive from top to bottom.



                                                                     Valley of Hinnom

     Finally arrived at our hotel. A very nice one with a beatiful courtyard. This is the view from our room.


      Oh yeah, guess who took the picture below?


     Getting pretty tired, now. Will promise to get into some pictures tomorrow when we get a chance to look like we got a full night's sleep.

9 comments:

  1. Love the blog!!! Can't wait to see more pictures...

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  2. Awww you guys are going to have so much fun. Good job with the blog and keep it up! We want to see more pictures:)
    Love~
    The Watsons

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  3. Happy you had a safe flight. Have a fabulous time with our dear fellow brother and sisters there. Looking forward to seeing more photos!

    Love and Miss You!!

    Raquel (MIMA) Jimenez

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  4. Yay! How exciting! Those pics are amazing! I wish i could go to a different country, love the blog, miss you guys -veronie adams

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  5. This is veronica again, sorry but i cant figure out why this message is tittled you jerk, sorry i have no idea why it says that and i cant figure out how to remove it

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  6. glad you guys made it safe and sound!! I love the picture of the double decker plane(I'm a plane nerd) and all the other pictures :) Have a great time and cant wait to see more pictures and blog.

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  7. What an amazing trip. We are enjoying seeing the pictures of places that we've read about. Have a safe and fun vacation!
    Snyders

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  8. Well. It's official. I'm jealous. NOT envious. Just jealous. Love the pictures!! Keep them coming so we can be there too. Love ya guys.
    Jason&Bree

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  9. What a GREAT experience. Enjoyed all the pics, and your blog. Thanks so much. Love you guys.

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