ISRAEL: JAFFA AT NIGHT, Part II

A day in slowly-moving Jaffa is a nice rest between the insanity of Los Angeles and the crowds of Jerusalem. Jaffa is clean, picturesque, historic, and uncrowded--at least in mid-March. As is the case in so many foreign places, it seems that there is something beautiful or captivating in every direction:

I'm not sure what the sculpture on the left is supposed to represent (maybe tae kwon do?), but the lines almost exactly (and randomly) mimic the tree on the right:

Al-Bahr mosque, completed in the 16th century, is quite close to St. Peter's Church, testifying to the years of religious cohabitation in this area:

ISRAEL: TEL AVIV, JAFFA, AND A FEW MIRACLES, Part I

Airport art: David Ben Gurion,
Israel's 1st President and
the airport's namesake

The Israeli port city of Tel Aviv is the entry place for most Westerners visiting Israel. A "tel" is a hill made by layers of human civilization, an archaeological goldmine. "Aviv" means "spring," implying renewal or rebirth. Together, "Tel Aviv" signifies the rebirth of an ancient civilization. Tel Aviv is a very modern city born out of the ancient city of Jaffa, which today is the Old Town section of Tel Aviv.

Although Jerusalem has almost twice as many people as Tel Aviv, there is only a small international airport there, and it has been closed to civilian traffic since 2001. While Jerusalem may be the religious and cultural center of Israel, Tel Aviv, the business and technology hub, is a thriving metropolis and has the second-largest economy in the Middle East, behind only Dubai. It makes sense to put the main airport there.

Tel Aviv was our first destination.

Paranoid about Los Angeles traffic, we left our home about five hours before our flight time. It usually takes us from one-and-a-half to two hours to get to LAX, but if there is traffic, we may spend three or more hours in gridlock. Happily, we arrived with lots of time to spare, enjoyed a meal in the Lemonade Restaurant (amazingly good organic salads and our favorite place to eat at LAX),

Picture from here

. . . departed LAX almost an hour late, then flew from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv with a too-short, sweat-producing 30-minute connection in New York City, a total travel time, if we count our drive time from home, of almost 23 hours. The long flight had its bonuses, especially the last segment. We enjoyed sharing the plane with quite a few restless Hasidic Jews, who walked up and down the aisles wearing their black hats and heavy black coats during the entire flight. (Somehow their women managed to rest peacefully in their seats while more or less controlling the children.) Also, I met people from three different churches who were on a Holy Land pilgrimage with their pastors and others from their congregations. Not your usual passenger list.

Classy and clean Ben Gurion Airport

After going through immigration at the Tel Aviv Airport with no problems, we were met by a representative of the private guide we had booked for the day, and within minutes of meeting him, another couple from our group also arrived on schedule, and the four of us left the airport with the young man sent to collect us.

Just a word about airport meet-ups.  It is a bit presumptuous to think that you can fly half-way around the world on different planes, even different airlines and different routes, and arrive on time and meet up as arranged. However, that's exactly what happened on this trip.  Four couples, four schedules, four safe and timely arrivals (the second two couples did make the last leg of the journey together). One BIG miracle.