Hey!!!! When I got back to the hotel room this morning, my travel group was there.
I was anxious for them to fill in all of their adventures, day by day, on the blog. All they have to do is post their adventures under the comments for each day.
We went down, and had breakfast together at the hotel, and then hiked our way back to the train station. After paying another 11 euros each, we boarded the train for the airport.
We booked a direct flight from Rome to Tel Aviv on Meridian fly Airlines through Expedia. Cost per person was $197, including all fees. That sounded like a great deal to us. Total cost, $788
Since we had a few hours to kill before we had to go through customs, we decided to blow the last of our Euros on trinkets to remember our time in Italy. We each found some junk to show off to others when we returned to America.
With all of our European cash blown, we headed toward customs and boarded our flight.
The flight was 3 hours and 10 minutes. We landed at the Ben Gurion International Airport, and began looking around for brochures or maps that might help us to find a place to stay for the week while we waited for our bags to be offloaded from the plane. We were very aware of the armed security guards everywhere. They all carried automatic machine guns, and seemed very distrustful of us.
At the airport, we converted some money into local currency - 1 US Dollar = 3.61548 Israeli New Shekel. We converted $3000, which gave us 10800 Israeli New Shekels after fees.
We were still waiting on our bags to come off of the plane, when we were informed that today, the airport workers were going on strike, and that planes were being allowed to land, but no planes would be departing, and there were no ground services such as offloading of bags would be happening. Here is a link to that report:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE68C0F420100913
This throws a huge monkey wrench into our plans, and we decide to hang out in the star-shaped rotunda inside the airport. There's duty-free shopping, and a number of cafes and restaurants to choose from. We find a restaurant with American food inside the Buy and Bye, a mall located within the lower concourse of the airport. Most importantly, there's a number of benches that we utilize as sleeping quarters tonight while we wait on our bags. Food and pillow/blanket costs: 400 Shekels
by: Ben
Funds spent today: $788, 470 Euros (rest of group has 1128.90 euros), Converted $3000, 400 Shekels
Remaining Budget: $79392.28
Cash in Euros: 0
Cash in New Israeli Shekels: 10400
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