London Calling.

Guess what? Better yet, guess where we are? If you guessed London, then you are absolutely right! Who called it? Eh? Who? Oh, yea. It was me.

Long story short? We made it to London on the El Al flight from the underworld. Children screaming. No personal air vents. Middle section seats with no chance of seeing out a window.

El Al, being so intelligent, left only an hour and a half window from the time we were scheduled to land to the time the new flight was to take off. El Al took off in Tel Aviv very late. By the time we arrived in London, we were 45 mins into our hour and a half window -- and still had to go through security AGAIN. 35 other people were on the El Al flight transferring to the Virgin Atlantic flight. Everyone ran to get there in time. Security's line was packed. There was lots of yelling and chaos. The supervisor who was taking care of our connection broke the "que" and everyone bum-rushed the security. Screaming from the staff insued. Michael and I got sent through immigration because of some duty free items that were not sealed properly while the rest of the others went through. While in immigration, we missed our flight.

I found out later that when the other people who kept going, the second they got to the gate, the doors were closed on them and they, too, missed the flight.

But it gets better. We spoke to Virging Air first and they told us the problem was El Al's fault (of course) and to talk to them. Because we went through immigration, we were seperated from the group and, hence, had to go all over the air port to the departure terminal to talk to El Al. When we reached the kiosk, no one was there. Why, you may ask? Because they were on a break. This was 3:00 London time. El Al wasn't due to open again until 7pm. Yea.
We camped out on the floor in front of the El Al office. We found a really nice lady who worked for them and she was as helpful as she could be, which was actually very nice. However, it was only soothing to our nerves, not to our actual problem. All told, we spent seven hours camped out on the floor in front of the El Al office while they were trying to scramble to place 35 tired, hungry, and slightly irate people in a hotel and a new flight.

Basically, we're never flying El Al again, despite the couple of nice people we dealt with. Any other airline would have taken care of this immediately. There was no reason for any of this to have taken 7 hours, especially when we were through immigration for the last five of the seven hours while everyone esle was stuck trying to attain Visas because of being Israeli citizens. There was no reason for us to be camped out on the floor in front of their office while they ate bananas and everyone else was going through immigration and couldn't be helped anyhow. It was rediculous.
By the time we got to our hotel, it was too late to tour. Seven hours in London was wasted due to stupidity that we could have spent doing something other than staring at luckier people leave the air port.

We have an early morning flight that will, G-d willing, bring us to America. We've got more connections though and are basically spending the next 24 to 48 hours in transit. More details to come. Keep posted.

Zoo and beyond!!

Believe it or not, we totally made it to the Biblical Zoo today! YAY!!!

The day began well. We slept in a little, which was lovely. Then we headed out to get some lunch at Sbarro's. Unfortunately, it was disappointing in that it was $14 US for the two of us (Two slices of pizza and two drinks -- that's it for all that money) and not very good at all. Mostly bread with a little cheese and it wasn't even cooked all the way. My restaurant ratings are low for this one and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, sadly. But we ate it and we were satiated, for a while, so it wasn't all bad.
After lunch, we headed to the central bus station to catch our bus to the Zoo. We made it there in no time, really. Here's a sampling of things we saw ...


The Biblical Zoo is not so large. I'd say, it's probably not even a quarter of the size of the San Diego Zoo. However, what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality. I have to say, this was one of the nicest animal parks I've seen. And it had some really neat stuff for both adults and children (or children at heart). Plus, you could really get in and get very close to the animals (while maintaining a safe distacne of course), which was great!

After the Zoo, we'd thought we'd check out a mall. But we took the wrong bus and got a bit lost. After finding a bus we knew would take us back, we decided to check out the mall at the central bus station instead and then check out some dinner.

And dinner we had! We went to the fabulous Gong Japanese Festival Restaurant. This was in no way dissapointing at all! We ordered edimame as an appetizer to start and then we dined on salads and sushi that were so unbelievably good, I think it very well may have been the best sushi I've ever had. Since it was our last night in Jerusalem, we decided to splurge a bit at around 200 NIS for the entire meal. Not bad.

We walked home and it was a mix of emotions. Sad because we're leaving, happy because we're going home, excited to see what our last day in Israel will bring us. But all together, it was a great day and a fantastic trip!

Tomorrow, we plan to return our apartment to the Land Lady, do some last minute shopping for friends and family and ourselves, then head on over to Tel Aviv. We figure we'll check out B'nei Brak and try one last time to see if I can find a Shabbos robe. Then we're off early the following morning to London and then the US. We'll see if we make our connecting flight to America in London. EL AL really means Every Landing Always Late, so there is a chance we may miss our connection flight since there's only an hour and a half between the time we land and the time we take off again. If the EL AL flight is late, there's a real possibility we'll stay an extra day in London (here's hoping).

Not sure if we'll get to blog tomorrow, as the internet situation isn't clear. I hope to bring everyone a full update as soon as possible so please keep checking back for more stuff, especially if we do get delayed in London (oh, you'll hear about that for sure) and some closing statements regarding this trip!

I hope all is well! Bye for now!