Heading home

Well it's Jan 8th (my birthday) and we're heading home today.  It's 8:35AM here and we leave for the airport at 9:30.  We'll be back in Toronto at 6:30 tonight and if all goes well home before 9PM.

It's been a great week with almost too much to enjoy and consume but one thing we're certain of is that we want to come back already.

I'm sorry we didn;t blog more but uploading pictures is slow with the connectivity that we've had.  You can see most all of the pictures we'ver taken at.....

http://www.dolson.ca/israel2011

and

http://www.dolson.ca/israel2011bb/

Shalom for now.  The next pictures will be from Panama in about 10 days :)

N & G

Day 4

Well we are almost going to bed in Jerusalem after a long and great day.  We started out at the Dead Sea and went to Engeti Reserve then to a Kibbutz.  After that we headed to Jerusalem where we spent several hours touring the Old City.  There is too much to process let alone type about and post pictures.  Almost all of our pictures should be at www.dolson.ca/israel2011 very shortly as they are uploading now.

Tomorrow is more time here in Jerusalem and then off to Haifa where I have to go to work.

More later.......

Neil

Day 3

Welcome to day 3!  We met our guide for the next 2 days - a guy who has been doing this for years.  He seemed very nice and the morning started out well.  We went to Masada, a site where King Herod built a winter palace and fort.  We learned the whole story of the Israeli rebels and how they dealt with the Roman invasion in 66AD and in AD72.  All very interesting and awe-inspiring!

After a lovely lunch back at the hotel (while our guide got a bigger car to hold our luggage tomorrow), we visited an ancient Roman  fort and looked at all the water economies.  I found a lovely bird to photogragh too.  :-)

We moved on to a kibbutz style desert farm set-up.  I forget the name but it was more individual owners than the all for one style.  The man we met grows peppers, tomatoes, melons and date palms.  It was SO interesting and it was neat to meet a local farmer who uses the fertilizer made by Neil's sister company in Israel.  The palm tree farm was amazing.

On the way home,  we stopped to look at a night view of the Dead Sea Works, which mines potash fertilizer out of the Dead Sea.  Our guide told us a lot of interesting stories about how it all came to be.  I thought the lights were pretty.  LOL  All in all, a fabulous day at the Dead Sea - on to Jerusalem tomorrow.

Gail



Day 2 ~ a work day

Honestly today was a work day.  We got picked up at the hotel by the General Manager of the South Plant for our sister company Haifa.  We enjoyed the drive that started in the city and ended at the plant in the desert.  To prove we were at the plant and working here is some of what we saw......

After lunch we drove through more of the desert to the Dead Sea.  The scenary was far too spectacular to capture in pictures although we took several.  We will load them all to the dolson site when we have a better internet connection.  The road down to the Dead Sea was as good as any mountain road I have been on.  One picture worth using our bandwidth on is ..........

The three official languages of Israel are on the sign......Hebrew, Arabic and English.  And yes, we did see several camels but were not able to get a good picture.

After work we headed to the Dead Sea.  After checking into the hotel we went floating in the sea as attested by the folowing pictures......



and........

Tomorrow we go with a guide and will have more pictures......

Neil

The trip over and arriving in Tel Aviv

We had a nice flight over that was enhanced by being able to fly business class.  Here's a picture of me enjoying the pod style seating we had.

The seat actualy laid down flat and we were both able to sleep some.  I watched two and a half movies, hopefully I can finish the one on the way home next weekend.

These are the Gaurus Mountains that Gail could see as we flew in over Turkey.

Here's proof we arrived :)  Our bags were the LAST to come off the carosel, we had actually started wondering if they were lost.

We had a New York City style cab ride to our hotel where we quickly settled in and then left again for a taxi ride to Jaffa which is one of the oldest ports in the world and is spoken of in the Old Testament of the Bible.

These rocks were right at the entrance to the harbour protecting it very well.  They are called Andromeda Rocks and are related to Greek Mythology involving sacrificial virgins and rescuing heros.  We saw none of that today.

Here's one of several Mosques we saw.

and the famous clock tower.

and the view back to Tel Aviv from Haifa.  We took a taxi over but it was about a 3kms walk back to our hotel along the beach.  We dipped our hands in the Mediterranean before we came back inside.

So now we're back in the room vegging before going out to suppper.  We're thinging about walking a few blocks to eat but right now it's raining so we may end up staying in the hotel.  Then it will be off to bed for a well deserved sleep.

Tomorrow is a work day..............

Neil