Words    Words    Words

I notice while over England that their neat regular rows of farm fields look suspiciously similar to the long, narrow rows of flats in their towns. I wonder how many other places modeled their cities after their farm structure, whether intentionally or not?

While airport food is usually sub-standard, it seems the English reputation for bad food extends even here; I count FIVE sandwich shops with near-identical selection of sandwiches–all fairly unappetizing–in one airport terminal. I was also rather confused by an entire shopping mall located INSIDE the “secure” sections of the airport; why have a whole mall that only transient travelers can access?

They do have a very cool water fountain in the outdoor smoking area, with several jets alternating in a cycle of patterns, complete with color-changing lights. Unfortunately, they turn it off right after sunset, which made us wonder why bother to have the pretty lights if you’re going to turn off the fountain right when you can begin to see the shifting colors.

Surprisingly, we do not have any strange delays on the second flight leg, which is a mere 5 hours and one timezone away from Israel. Sadly, I can’t watch the flight progress as the signal is so wavy to watch that I start feeling mildly nauseous, which is not something you want to encourage on an aircraft.

Steve notices on the plane that he has never before been in the presence of such a large percentage of “his people”–looking out over the heads in the plane seats shows a high number of men with Steve’s particular style of male pattern baldness.

As we begin descent, there’s another “we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment: You can’t take aerial pictures from the plane over Israel. Obviously someone has, since there’s an enlarged aerial photo hanging in the airport terminal in Tel Aviv, but it made me wonder whether they say similar things now when one flies into Washington DC.

Steve remarks that he much prefers the European airport custom of simply telling you that smoking is forbidden in the terminal, rather than the American custom of “we are pleased to bring you this smoke-free environment” “except in designated areas” (and then no designated areas are provided). I notice that international children seem to like me just as much as American kids tend to, I play visual peek-a-boo with a tired yet adorable little boy while we’re waiting to get through customs.

Tel Aviv is immediately visually different from the air, as nearly all of the buildings are very pale in hue. I remember hearing someone say during the visit that it was due to the particular mix of sand used in making the concrete for the buildings. The airport is definitely the most colorfully and enjoyably decorated of any I’ve been in; even the offloading ramps have brightly-hued Israeli ads and tourist posters lining both walls.

We’re met by Didi Chanoch and Michael Grosberg at the airport; they’re our GoH handling team. We have a positive first impression of both guys that certainly holds true for the rest of the visit. More about our awesome handlers soon…

They take us to check in and deposit our bags at Hotel Cinema, which is a hotel converted from the first movie-house in Israel. The decor is great, all huge archaic movie projectors and Frankensteinian switches and knobs decorating many walls. The mezzanine has a glassed-in display of old movie posters and other cool movie-house memorabilia. The night clerk is Alfonso from Plano, Texas, who is hilarious and Steve seems to particularly enjoy engaging with him in verbal banter.

The first thing noticeable about our hotel room is the size; it’s a perfectly nice room, but at most half the size of an average hotel room in the States. They’ve warned us that everything in Israel is built smaller and more efficiently, which makes a ton of sense for a country with insanely limited amounts of available land (compared to the land-profligacy of the USA). It is definitely one of the few aspects of our time there that Steve says would be the hardest for him to adjust to, were we to spend larger chunks of time in Israel.

We don’t have time to notice much else, as we fall over thud in the nicely firm bed. (Well, two twin beds pushed together, but they worked just fine.) We sleep the sleep of the newly-internationally traveled until it’s time to wake up for the events of the evening. And that’s as good a place as any to leave you wanting more, for now.