Getting There...

I want to throw out the old Henny Youngman joke - I just flew in from Phoenix and boy are my arms tired!

Getting to Israel isn't a quick trip.  It's around 10 hours or more from New York, which, if you read my previous post is where I meet Dad and the others from Harrison City.  I need to add about four hours or so to that for my time since my trip starts about 2200 miles to the southwest.  Fortunately, I'll get to stretch my legs in New York before boarding another plane for the international portion of the trip, although those planes do tend to have a little additional leg room.

So, it's about 14 hours on a plane from the Phoenix airport to Israel.  That's not the longest I've ever been on a plane but also doesn't include any layovers.  I don't have my flight itinerary yet so I don't know our route once we leave New York.  I suppose it's possible that we could fly non-stop but I don't think it's likely.  Time will tell.

At the time of year we're traveling the time difference is -7 hours for Dad and -9 hours for me.  That means that when it's midnight in Phoenix, it's 9:00 AM in Israel.  It also means those first few days are going to be a little rough due to some seriously messed up body clocks.  If this flight is similar to other international trips I've taken, we should get in sometime in the afternoon of the second day.  When in the afternoon will depend on the directness (or lack thereof) of our flight plan.  What has worked reasonably well in the past has been to force yourself to stay up until an early bed time in the new time zone then go to sleep and wake up the morning of day 3 ready to be a tourist.  The end of day 3 can be a little rough but things usually get better after that.

So now we're there. What oh what are we going to do?  Thanks to the itinerary in the previous post and a timely birthday gift from Brittany of a Fodor's Israel travel book, I'll start giving an overview of the cities we visit in the next post.

See you next time,
Tim