Today I flew to Israel. It has been a trip two years in the making, and I am ecstatic. Or at least I would be if it were not for jet lag and traveler’s exhaustion.
I’ll begin by explaining this trip. It is a tour of Israel organized by author Cliff Graham, who writes novels based on the lives of King David and his Mighty Men. A couple years ago he began organizing tours of Israel to take people to the places that he wrote about in his books, as well as other cool Biblical sights. As he was working with a travel agency, he received a small number of tickets per trip for free. He offered these tickets to the first few people who paid their 10% deposit, essentially lowering the cost of the trip from $5000, to $500. I could not afford a $5000 trip, but I could afford a $500 one. I signed up for the trip and managed to get one of the discounted slots. However, that also meant that I got last say on when I could go, and through various circumstances I kept getting pushed back further and further for the next two years. However, now it is finally happening.
My flight was scheduled for 10 PM from JFK Airport in New York via LOT Polish Airlines, routed through Warsaw. Having just finished the Revive event weekend with my church, we had to quickly pack up and leave in order to make it to the airport in time to check in prior to my flight. We navigated through the bustling New York traffic, making it to the airport just in time.
Once I boarded the flight, surrounded by people who spoke primarily Polish, the flight was an hour and a half delayed in taking off. My plan had been to try and sleep for the entirety of the flight, but that didn’t work out. As soon as we were at cruising altitude, they turned on all the lights so that they could serve us food and drinks. The food was good, but I would have preferred sleep. After a couple hours they finally turned off the lights and I was able to get a few hours of sleep before sunrise and breakfast (which was served around what would become lunch time? Traveling messes with my feeding schedule.)
I landed in Warsaw one hour late. Which was not too much of a problem as I had a three hour layover. After bumbling through the Warsaw Airport trying to find my next flight (I don’t understand a single word of Polish). I was able to meet a couple of the people going on the tour with me, Anne and Myra. We ate lunch/dinner/whatever-meal-it-was together, feasting on fine polish cuisine (kielbasa sausage). I am not sure exactly how much it cost, because I had never paid for something in Polish money before. I can figure it out later.
We then boarded our flight to Tel Aviv at 3:30 Polish time. I noticed several of the people were speaking more English or Hebrew (of which I can make out a few words). It was comforting to know that at least I would be able to hold a basic conversation if need be.
The plane landed just after dark, and the lights of the city of Tel Aviv were spectacular to behold. Finding my way off the plane was a little difficult, and I had to fight the urge to try and read every little bit of Hebrew that I saw (there was a lot.) I met up with Cliff (the trip organizer) and two more members of the tour, Stacey and Angela, and we caught a taxi to our hotel, driving right through the center of downtown Tel Aviv, it was dark so I was unable to get as good of pictures as I wanted. About half-way to the hotel the cops completely stopped traffic on a five lane highway by pulling out in front of everyone, so that they could push a wrecked car across the road to safer ground. Cliff used that moment to mention that this place, however wonderful, is also completely unpredictable.
As we drove, Cliff pointed out a couple of neat historical things. The main highway is built on top of the way of the sea, the main trade route between Africa and Eurasia, or in more historical terms Egypt and the rest of the world. This highway had been the most contested piece of real estate in the world, because everyone wanted to control the main trade route to Egypt.
We came to the hotel late and tired. So we went to our rooms and collapsed.