Welcome my friends to our final Journey to Israel. There have been so many things to share and it was so hard to pick just a few choice pictures of exploring. Today I’m going to highlight some of the sites we saw and some of the wonderful food we tasted. (If you missed any of the previous Journey to Israel postings – check them out here – Week 1 – Week 2 and Week 3
From left to right –
King David Tower in the Old City and View from Herodium
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Welcome my friends with our Journey to Israel series. If you have missed the previous two editions please see them at Part I and Part II. This is a wonderful trip that my Aunt took around the Christmas holidays. She was willing to share her adventure with everyone here in blogville. Today she will focus on some sights that she was able to check out. Here you go – hope you enjoy 🙂
Isn’t this just beautiful!?
You think of Israel and it really doesn’t come to mind the beauty of palm trees. I thought of flat lands, mountain areas, a lot of churches and history. But we so much more there. The weather was perfect for our adventures. It almost felt like spring/fall – coolness in the air and not hot at all. We visited at a perfect time because in the summer months temperatures can exceed 109 degrees – way to hot for adventures.
This beautiful picture of palm trees was taken near Masada which is in the southern district of Israel. 
On this date, we went through the Masada National Park. There was a small fee to access and explore the park – which I highly recommend you visit. There are actually two paths that you can take for your explorations –
Here is another picture to the left of some of the paths at Masada. Can you see the beauty – the mountains, the sky and all of the old rocks?
It’s not an easy path to walk and plan on taking lots of breaks to enjoy the scenery. And just to let you know – the path that we walked was equivalent to walking 91 flights of stairs – so says the Apple Health App. Can you believe that?!
Also – have fresh batteries in your camera. You don’t want to miss anything and you definitely want to be able to look at these awesome pictures after your return home from your adventure.
I leave you this week with another picture from the Snake Trail path and of course a food pic – no blog would be complete without some type of food porn. I hope you enjoyed today. Join me next week for another edition of Journey to Israel.
Welcome my friends to my second installment of Journey to Israel. This is a trip that my Aunt made over the Christmas holidays. If you missed the first part of getting to Israel, check it out here. Part of the adventure was getting there. Today, I bring you some pictures of Israel and the journey my Aunt took.
For some reason when I pictured where we would be staying while we were in Israel, I never thought modern or updated – LOL. Go figure huh? Well, I was happily impressed with our lodging. This is the building with balconies that overlook the city. See the beautiful clouds – the temperature during our stay at Christmas time was around the 70’s – perfect weather for exploring the lands.
This is another picture overlooking where we stayed – you can see more of the city in it. You feel old country – you kind of settle into a different world from what you have been accustomed all of your life. Such an adventure that we couldn’t wait to go exploring in the city. And you hear nightmare stories of safety. Personally, we didn’t feel at all afraid of anywhere we went. The people were open and friendly – always there with suggestions of what to eat or what to see.
One of the first adventures we went on, it had been raining and we stumbled upon the glorious rainbow picture showing a bus coming down the street. What better way to say welcome to Israel? And as you can imagine, there are a lot of ‘touristy’ areas but there are also a lot of areas that showed how old the land really was, how mountainous and vast some areas are.
Here are some pictures of some food that we tried and a coke can – do you recognize anything?
Every Wednesday for the month of February, I’m going to bring you a travel story of a trip to Israel that my aunt went on during the Christmas holidays. This was indeed a once in a lifetime kind of trip full of great scenery, history and wonderful food and people. I’ve looked over my aunt’s pictures and I can tell you in one word a description of them – AMAZING! I hope you enjoy us every week this month so that we may all relive her travels.
A trip to Israel? Seriously? Do I have to scream YES?! Plans to be made – passports to be ordered. What do I pack? What will the food be like? The people? Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first, travel arrangements. Everything was planned months in advance.
Then the big day came – WOW! I’m so excited. I rushed around the house doing final packing and out the
door to the airport I was. I was happily counting down the hours until touch down in the old country. I get to the airport for the first part of my trip which is to fly in to Detroit for my connecting flight to Paris. However, this is where I met my first obstacle. My flight to Detroit was delayed due to damage the plane took on while in flight. Bummer. But safety first, right? So they put us up in a hotel overnight with food vouchers. Who can say no to that, right? It was part of our adventure.
The next day, we did it all over again and was able to get on the plane for Detroit. This flight took us a little over an hour. Once in Detroit, we then boarded our connecting flight to Paris – the land of love. This time we would be in the sky for almost 8 hours. And who says that airplane food is bad – especially served with free wine 🙂 
Airplane food – pastas, lentil salad
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Finally we touched down in Paris where we would have a six hour layover. Paris has lots of emphasis on style, perfume, alcohol shops and lots of smoking areas – thank goodness. Since our layover was only six hours, we decided to check out the airport and what it had to offer. Chocolates for one thing – yum! The Paris Airport has a Fauchon shop which is known for their macarons. Also at the airport, the have cheese and wine – who would have thought that huh? It just makes you want to pull up and nibble on some for a while.
Below is a picture of the ‘smoking rooms’ at the Paris Airport. Crowded huh? Also below is a picture of a coffee shop. Coffee in Paris is different than in the States, not only by taste but size. In Paris, the largest cup size that is offered is smaller than a Starbucks tall. What a difference!
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Finally, it was time to board the plane for our final connecting flight to Tel Aviv which would take us over 5 hours. Again, with free wine and great food – we were set for the destination of our travels. Please join us next Wednesday for more in my travels to Israel.
Mom told me about this show that she used to watch growing up as a child. It was called Romper Room. Do you remember it? She said that it was a series that ran from 1953 until 1994. Of course, snort – mom came in there sometimes in the late 1970’s.
She told me she used to watch it ALL of the time. We even found an old back issue of one of them and she showed it to me. Even dad said he watched it growing up. Of course, it was right up there with shows like Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers.
There were lots of things that mom and dad both said they learned. One thing was when they served milk and cookies to the children. You remember the little prayer given before eating, “God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen.” I think I’ve even heard daddy still mutter that before dinner sometimes – snort.
And do you remember the bumblebees, Mr. Do-Bee and Mr. Don’t-Bee? Do-Bee good little children and Don’t Be Mean. Those were so hilarious when we watched the show the other day – LOL
The ending was my favorite – the magic mirror. “Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?” The teacher would then name off names, “I see Jimmy and Lucy and Tiffany and Judy…” I *so* hoped she would say Bacon in the episode we watched, but she didn’t. Mom said she never said her name either. Pooey.
So, I kind of wanted to do a throw back to the old Romper Room Magic Mirror. I wanted to look in my Magic Mirror and ‘see‘ all of the people that have seen my blog.
I see Hungary, I see Italy, I see Bosnia and Herzegovina. I see Greece, I see Lebanon, I see Australia and I see Oman (I had to look that one up on the map!).
I see Saudi Arabia, I see Denmark, I see Maylaysia and I see United Republic of Tanzania. I see Estonia, I see Kenya, I see Vietnam and I see Pakistan.
I see Israel, I see the United States, I see the Netherlands and I see the United Kingdom. I see Canada, I see South Africa, I see Mexico and I see Germany.
I see Singapore, I see Spain, I see Georgia (not to be confused to the Georgia where I live in the United States 🙂 and I see the Phillippines. I see Brazil, I see India, I see Portugal and I see Indonesia.
I see Switzerland, I see Poland, I see Russian Federation and I see Ireland. I see Serbia, I see New Zealand, I see Malta and I see France.
I see Thailand, I see Taiwan, I see Guatemala and I see Sweden. I see Republic of Korea, I see Norway, I see Hong Kong and I see Austria.
I see Columbia and I see Aruba. I see Peru and I see Ukraine.
Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you again REALLY SOON my friends. Hogs and Kisses – Bacon
Piglove 