Off to Jerusalem

Today (February 19, 2020) was a pretty non-exciting day as we were just flying to Jerusalem, but it is an all-day endeavor, at least for us. While it is only around 40-50 miles away, it is not accessible via a straight path. If you want to drive, you have to take a long detour to a border crossing which can be a little sketchy and in the end, takes about 5 hours. It also involves multiple buses/taxis/currencies and seemed like a pain. Given this, we decided to fly!

We woke up at our hotel around 7:30 and went and had breakfast. It had some tasty things, but wasn't as good at the Marriot in Petra, which was to be expected. After eating, we packed our things and I worked on my blog and homework will about 11:30, when we left our hotel to head to the airport. We wanted to be quite early as we didn't know what to expect for security and we also wanted to use the lounge as it had very good reviews.

It was exactly 1 pm by the time we got to the airport, returned our rental car, and cleared their security, which wasn't as bad as we initially thought. We went straight to the Crown Lounge which is Royal Jordanians business lounge. They had a beautiful selection of snacks including pastries, sandwiches, tacos, and even icecream! They also had small cans of coke light which was nice! I got started on some of my homework, but didn't get that far by the time we needed to leave, nonetheless, getting some done is better than doing nothing! Hunter really appreciated the lounge, they had some delicious local style Arabic cream-filled pastries which he managed to get all over his face

We boarded our plane by taking a bus from the terminal to the plane. Our flight was upgraded to a 787 Dreamliner, so it was very empty. This will probably be the shortest flight to biggest plane ratio we ever experience. The flight was approximately 1 hour due to the routing they have to take as the airspace is very complicated and the approaches don't line up well since they are designed to keep planes going into Israel out of Jordanian airspace and planes going into Jordan out of Israeli airspace. Jordan is basically a dead end for any plane launching from Israel since it is surrounded by Syria, Iraq, and Suadi Arabia none of whom allow flights from Israel in their airspace. This flight is extremely unique as it is the only flight from an Arab country to TLV. The Jordanians are probably the most friendly of the Arab nations towards Israel, which is especially remarkable when you consider that a lot of Israel used to belong to Jordan. The politics of this region get really complex and it is difficult to track everyone's opinions even with Hunter jumping in to explain things. For instance, the Yemeni Air Force One was parked next to the plane we took out of Amman. It was likely there to avoid the Saudi led bombing campaign which has decimated much of Yemen. While there was conflict nearby we always felt very safe and the Jordanians have a very responsible and present police and military. The checkpoints and security were a little confusing at first but they were always very friendly and professional with us. When we finally arrived in Israel after a predictably bizarre series of aerial turns and donuts, we cleared passport control and they gave us a little paper to keep with our passport instead of a stamp. If you do get a stamp in your passport from Israel, it can make future travels extremely complex because not everyone is accepting of Israel as a country, so the paper option is very good to have. We also stopped at an ATM on our way out of the airport to get money for the bus to Jerusalem which was 16 Israeli New Shekels (about $5 USD). Since it was dark, we didn't take many pictures in TLV.

Another little plane we saw while waiting at the gates

United Nations Challenger plane

Our boarding pass, they take the main piece and just leave us with the seat ticket tab, so we took a picture 

On the bus to get on our plane

Yemeni airforce plane

The bus departed TLV at 6pm and we arrived exactly one hour later at 7pm. It was a bit rainy, but we walked to the Air BnB we booked which was only 15 minutes away. When we got there, we looked for a good place nearby to have dinner, and found a fish and chips place in the market beside where we were staying. It was called Fish'en chips and was delicious. It was about 25 USD for hunter and I to eat there and the servings were more than enough to satisfy our hunger. By the end we were both stuffed and very happy. The market was really cool and had a huge variety of stalls, I found a candy store and was very happy to use some of our spare change from the bus journey for a dessert.

We also found a stall selling candy and I just HAD to pick a few pieces to snack on!

After eating we returned to our hotel and showered, It was a very very small shower, but the warm water was nice. We did some research and planning before going to sleep.