We crossed into our second day shortly after taking off from Newark last night. The flight to Tel Aviv was long (10.5 hours) but uneventful, and I was actually able to get in some decent sleep.
We landed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv around 4:40pm. It took almost two hours to get through immigration, get our bags and then find our bus to the hotel in Hadera. It was dark when we finally made it outside, but the weather was quite pleasant.
Driving in the dark, this area was almost indistinguishable from the United States except for the signs written in Arabic or Hebrew. The bus ride to Hadera Beach took about an hour and during the ride I was able to do a little bit of studying for our itinerary tomorrow, which is supposed to include Jezreel, Mt. Gilboa, Mt. Tabor, and Beth Sheehan.
At the Ramada Hadera Resort, on the Mediterranean Sea, we were met by one of our guides named Ami along with Dr. Cloud who had arrived earlier on a different flight. They gave us keys to our rooms and directions for the evening. We had dinner in the hotel buffet, which was quite delicious. I’m not exactly sure what all of it was, but consisted of several different kinds of meat, potatoes, and rice.
After dinner I was able to talk to the girls back in the U.S. before we had a short orientation meeting with Dr. Cloud. During the meeting we found out that the earlier group did not go to Caesarea Maritima today as planned, so we are going to squeeze it in tomorrow morning. This was great news for me as I was excited to see Caesarea “by the Sea” that features prominently in the book of Acts.
I was hoping to get in a treadmill run tonight, but by the time I got dressed, and made it to the gym, it was already closed. I’m now writing this just before 11pm local time and really hoping I can get some sleep before our busy day tomorrow.