Thursday/Friday, February 24/25, 2011

In Flight

Approaching Tel Aviv

Landing at Tel Aviv

Ben Gurion Airport



I left Birmingham, which was in the mid 70’s, on time and arrived in Philadelphia, which was in the mid-45’s, on time.  Our flight to Tel Aviv was delayed approximately one hour, because the pilots were late arriving.  After a late start, we had a very smooth ten plus hour flight to Tel Aviv.  After dinner, which was served first, I got about 5+ hours of sleep.   Fortunately, the seat next to me was vacant in the two seat section I was in. [Maybe this was because I was in row 13.]  Therefore I had the luxury of a lot of room to spread out and could lie down to sleep.  Actually, I had selected seat 13H, because I wanted a window seat to permit me to lean against the window to sleep.  About an hour before landing, we had breakfast.  

Because we were late taking off from Philly, we were about 1-1/2 hours late getting to our gate. No problem, because there wasn't any connecting flight and I also had all carry-on luggage.  I presented my conference invitation letter and walked right through passport control. The passport controller said that she studied at Shenkar college and stamped my passport. We had to wait for a couple of other people, who did have luggage, and then had about a ½ hr taxi drive into Tel Aviv. They are getting a lot of dust from Africa and it is fairly hazy, but it is warm weather like Birmingham has been having.  Tomorrow there is about a 30% change of rain, which should clear the air.  My hotel, the Hotel Shalom and Relax, is located on the Mediterranean.  It is quite nice, just opened a month ago, and is wired with WiFi for easy internet access.  So, I am all set!  I plan to stay up until around 10 PM to get on an Israeli time schedule.  Tomorrow is a free day and, weather permitting,  I’ll plan to walk some in the city and along the coast.