Arriving in the Promised Land

Israel is not off to a great start for me.

The Israeli couple who sat next to me on the plane didn’t even acknowledge my presence when they sat down. I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before. I mean, you don’t need to chat, but at least smile and recognize that someone is in the seat that’s 2 millimetres away from you.

Then the driver my hotel had booked thought he was taking me to Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem! Luckily he said something before we had left the airport, so we didn’t go the wrong way! But he’s clearly not happy. Complained that he’s hungry and that the traffic to Jerusalem is bad. I had to argue on the phone with his manager about how much money was owed. (I had already paid a deposit, and had written records of everything.) No music, not friendly chit chat, just listening to his conversations with his dispatcher. (I wish I understood Hebrew; I can tell from the references to Tel Aviv and Yerushaliam that he’s still — 20 minutes into the drive — complaining about it.

(Later: we are stuck in a traffic jam. And he’s diabetic. I offered him some beef jerky but he refused. Not sure if it is kosher. But he did accept a candy that I had. The rest of my travel food is in the trunk.)

At least the car isn’t smoky, which my taxi getting between the two Istanbul airports was. (Turns out that Istanbul has two airports. Who knew? I had gone to the wrong one. Luckily, I had left quite early so there was still time to catch my flight after the hour long taxi ride to the correct airport.) That driver was upset that I didn’t leave him a bigger tip. I paid him all the Turkish Liras and the US$ I had left, which would still have given him a reasonable tip. I had expected to pay with a credit card, but he wouldn’t accept that, so it is a good thing I had so much Turkish and US money left over.

One unexpectedly nice thing about my arrival in Israel though. I’d been warned that I might get grief about having a Kuwait passport stamp, but nope. The border agent didn’t ask me any questions; just smiled and said “Have a nice time”. Lovely. Maybe this is another advantage of being a woman “of a certain age”.