Happy Birthday Dan!

Today's travel day consisted of walking, light rail, a bus and a taxi! Quite the travelers we are! Last night we purchased our bus tickets with help from the hotel's front desk because the entire bus system's website was in Hebrew! The clerk was excellent and translated everything for us so we were all set to take the 10:00 bus from Jerusalem to Eilat, a beach town on the Red Sea in southern Israel. We had a quick breakfast and then we got our luggage and started walking to the train station. There were way less people than yesterday in the rain so we had no issues taking that to the central bus station. A whole lot less English in the bus terminal but we arrived in plenty of time to figure out the boarding pass and find our bus and our assigned seats. Thank goodness we had assigned seats because there was a lot of yelling and jostling and swapping of seats in the beginning. Then we were on the road!

We drove through Jerusalem a bit - lots of honking - and then it was on the highway. There were at least three checkpoints along the way where military boarded the bus but no trouble for us as we mostly slept and read. Outside of Jerusalem we initially saw a few farms with sheep or goats but soon it became very barren. There were sand and rocky hills but no life or towns. There were some interesting goats that had very long horns every so often. We think they were Nubian ibex. It's amazing that anything could survive out there with so little vegetation! Every hour or so we'd stop at a random bus stop on the side of the road and one or two people would get on. Again there would be some arguments and jostling for seats between those that reserved the seats and those that didn't. They seem to oversell the bus so by the end at least four people were standing or laying in the aisle for the last hour or so.

As we got closer to Eilat, life started to reappear. Trees and bushes started growing again. We saw a few huge feedlots or dairies that looked very out of place in the desert. Finally we arrived at the bus station in Eilat, got our bags and found a taxi to take us to our hotel: Herods Vitalis. We were offered champagne as we sat down to check in. The pours were quite generous and I guess we should have chugged them because as soon as we were done checking in, with half a glass to go, the clerk took the glasses behind the desk before we could take them to our room!

We headed upstairs to our very nice room, changed into our swimsuits and headed to the pool. The sun was starting to go down so we were getting a lot of shadows and not quite warm enough to go in the pool so we read for a bit and then took a nice walk on the beach. As sun set, we headed down to the spa and whirlpools. Our favorite was the shallow hot tub with a waterfall that messaged your back and neck as you sat in it. We'll definitely be hitting this one again tomorrow.

Dinner is included in our room so we went to the Israeli style restaurant for a three course meal including a delicious dessert of soufflé (Keely's choice) and sorbet (my choice). Looking forward to sleeping in and relaxing tomorrow! Nothing on the agenda except to enjoy the nice warm weather!

Kevin