Israel Trip

Ryan and I were very fortunate to have a trip of a lifetime experience recently.  We joined 90 other people on a trip with our senior pastor, Bryant Wright, to Israel.  We have never done a group tour before, but we were willing to try it for this.  This trip was nothing short of amazing!  I have made an entry for each one of our days.  I'm going to try and put in as much detail as possible, so I'll have this to look back on in future years.  So, here we go...

We left late on Sunday evening.  We flew Turkish Air with 3 other couples; everyone else flew on Delta.  Ryan and I were actually able to fly first class on these trips which was awesome.  When we walked on to the plane, we were given wireless headphones and wonderful freshly-made fruit drinks; they were delicious.

Not long after leaving Atlanta, our chef came by to introduce himself and show us the menu.  We were kind of blown away.

  The food was quite tasty and was freshly made.  The olive oil for the caprese salad made me so excited to get to the Middle East and enjoy lots of great food!  

When we flew in to Istanbul, we could see some great views of the city.  I wish we'd had more time to actually get out and explore!  However, we pretty much walked over to our next gate and boarded for Tel Aviv.  When we landed, it was already late and the sun had set.  Unfortunately, one of the couples traveling with us had a bag that didn't make it, so we all waited together to get that search process settled; they received it two days later, thank goodness.  We left the airport and drove about an hour or so north to Netanya.  It was really too late to see anything.  Imagine our surprise when we woke up the next morning and saw this view of the Mediterranean Sea was our room view!

 Our hotel was so cool looking too!  We had no idea from the night before.

From here, we boarded Bus #2 and settled in to seats that we'd claim for the rest of the trip.  We went to the second to last row.  We were right behind the back exit stairs so we were able to make quick entries and exits each time.  Across the aisle from us was Paul Trotti, Sr and behind us was Mike Anderson.  We are friends with both of their sons, so we already knew we would enjoy having them there.  We then got to know others who sat around us too.  We loved our "back of the bus gang!"  We were ready to get this adventure on the road!