Home safe and sound!

Hello family and friends!

Just a short post to let you know that we've made our way back home safe and sound from our trip.  After a morning spent packing for our return and checking out of the Jerusalem Olive Tree Hotel, we had a few more spots to see, namely a revisit to the Mount of Olives (this time sunny, although cool), the Israeli Holocaust Museum, and the Garden Tomb.  From there we went back to the hotel for dinner, boarded our bus for the last time and drove to the Tel-Aviv airport for a late Wednesday evening departure back to the US at 11:30PM.  Our international flight was on time and actually landed in Philadelphia a little early.  My flight home to Phoenix was extended a bit due to head winds in excess of 100 knots but our plane landed by noon.  My wife picked up me and my luggage and after a quick lunch I was able to take a "brisk" nap.  I saw email from my sister Betsy that Dad made it back as well.

Regarding details and pictures for the remainder of the trip, never fear.  I still have posts for days 8 and 9 to post.  I expect to have the first of those done sometime over the weekend and the second by early next week at the latest.  In addition, I'll review my notes and compare them to the posts to see if there are any additional details that would be worth sharing in a "final thoughts" entry to the blog.

One other note.  There were several bounce notices for what looked to be some but not all of my colleague's work email addresses.  I'm speculating but think it might have had to do with sending from an Israeli web domain.  Either way, I'll see you folks tomorrow and am assuming that you'll be sticking your head in my office to see how the trip went.

Next post will feature actual content!  See you then.
Tim