Jerusalem and other adventures

Hey guys,

it's been awhile since I could blog, but I finally had the time to tell you about the rest of my time in Israel. And finally, I will be able to show you the little video I made about my stay there! On another note, these are my last two weekends in Barcelona, which is why I will probably be talking more about the time I had here in the next posts.

So stay tuned :).

But first, let me tell you about our adventures in Israel:

After the amazing wedding, we decided to celebrate Shabbat in the religious Kibbutz in the North. The brother of my boyfriend moved from the Netherlands to Israel to serve the Army and we were invited for Shabbat dinner in home of his lovely host family. The evening was filled with delicious food and lots of laughter.

On Sunday we decided to explore Jerusalem over the day, and oh man, I did not know what to expect! For example, I had no clue that it was that far up the mountains, and I had no clue how modern this place is! I honestly even have to say that Jerusalem was so much prettier than Tel Aviv but at the same time, I have never met so many crazy people in one place.

At some point we had to laugh about all the weird things happening around us because we felt like in a middle of a circus.

We decided to go to the Western Wall, one of the holiest places and an important landmark of the Jewish culture. At the Western Wall, you can write down your wishes on a piece of paper and place it between the stones of the wall and pray for them to happen. Seeing this was pretty much overwhelming, there were so many women (women and men are seperated at the wall) crying while praying and placing their heads against the wall. I can only imagine of what pain they might have went through, and all my wishes seemed so small and less important. After we explored the Western Wall we decided to explore the centrum of Jerusalem and grab a coffee on the way. I still wanted to buy a few things before leaving Israel the next day, so we ended up in one of Jerusalem's markets.

I bought lots of spices, dead sea products and a beautiful necklace for my own little souvenir.

The next day went even worse than the arrival in Israel. Let me tell ya guys, this was the third flight that I almost missed!

I woke up, relaxed and on time and packed my bags. The flight of my boyfriend and his family would fly out later, which is why I decided that I wanted to go to the airport alone, as there was no need to for them to come too early even if they didn't have to. My boyfriend woke up at the same time as I did, and his family was awake as well. Once I was done packing, they decided to join me to the airport and all started packing. No big deal, I thought, it's nice I will have some company.

We went to the bus station later than I planned, and the first bus just didn't show up.

I started to worried, but there was still plenty of time left to catch another one. We went to another bus station to catch another bus, which afterall, came 20 minutes later than planned.

Once we sat in the bus towards Tel Aviv, we entered a huge traffic jam in the middle of the highway. This was the moment I panicked.

The customs in Israel are way harder and more complex than any customs I ever experienced in my fair share of travels. I knew I had to check in earlier to be able to go through all of it.

In the middle of the traffic jam I noticed it was already too late for me to catch my next connection. In tears I ran out of the bus, because not only did I know that check in would close any minute, but I had no real time to say goodbye to my boyfriend and his family.One last kiss and catched the next available cab. The cab drive started in a disaster when the automatic door that should bring us outside the cab area did not open, and we had to call customer support. I already sat in the cab sobbing, not only did I know I had to prepare myself on immense costs, but I was also sad about the way we had to say goodbye. The goodbyes with my boyfriend are important to me, and I love to take my time and cherish the last minutes. This time, it was a complete chaos.

After 15 minutes (I was already waaay passed the check in time), I finally arrived at the airport (with a lot less in my wallet, do NOT get a cab in Israel!!). I looked through the check ins of each airline and could not find in my check in desk.

Basically, the whole airport did not show you where exactly you had to go, and after asking two different information desks, I finally figured out that I had to be at a whoooole different level of the airport.

After answering the typical questions I was lucky and able to drop of my luggage as the last person of the flight and was told to go directly to the gate.

But guys, there were so many stops I had to take on the way. Security check was probably the worst part of them all, while I tried to explain them that I really needed to get it done quickly, the woman refused and did her job extra slow and yelled at me. In the end she went three times over my hair straightener “just to be sure”.

Once I was done with it, I had several other stops where I got yelled at for being to quickly, which resulted me in my last stop of the passport control. I had to pick up a pink paper to go through the doors to the gate and the guy in the booth was the only nice one.

He saw my puffy face from all the crying and asked me if security was rude to me *I guess it happens a lot there*. I immediately bursted out in tears again and told him I am missing my flight.

He then got my stuff done real quick with the words “They won't fly without you and now run”. And believe it or not, after all this stress and tears, I was sitting in the airplane.

I am already getting stressed out just writing about it all over again haha. But yeah, I have the feeling my airport stories in Israel are far more adventurous to talk about!

If you guys want to see the impressions I had on the trip, I made this little video: