Magical and Musical Vienna

To come, details of our 3 days in Vienna that followed our Israel trip
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Israel Trip - Part 1

Hello Everyone,
I've been trying to get some time to update you on our time in Israel thus far. There is so much to tell, but our schedule has been so full of amazing things that I am struggling with getting it all down. So for now I'll give you the basics and hope to share more in-depth and reflective stories later on.

We met up with our group at Vienna airport on Thursday afternoon. There are 32 of us in total in mixed ages from mid 20s to upper 60s I would guess. After a 3.5 hour flight we arrived in Tel Aviv at 12:55am local time early Friday evening (June 10th). We all cleared immigration and Customs in a record 40 minutes and were shortly after on a Coach headed toward our hotel in Jerusalem - Hotel Rivoli.

Since we all didn't get to bed until after 3:30am local time, we slept in until 11am the next morning and had a late brunch around noon before heading out for our first day of exploration. Our activities this day focused on Jesus in Jerusalem and stops this day included The Garden Tomb (a possible location of Jesus' burial that in the very least gives a better understanding of the type of situation Jesus would have been buried in), St Anne's and the Pools of Bethesda, the Via Dolorosa, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (built over what some believe is the garden tomb) and the Western 'Wailing' Wall.

On Day 2 (Saturday, June 11th) we travelled to the Dead Sea region for a glimpse at dessert life, including a visit to Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, Crazy King Herod's fortress at Masada, The pools and caves of En Gedi (where David hid from Kind Saul), and a float in a giant saline bath tub (the Dead Sea). Got my own souvenir chunk of Dead Sea salt deposits off a rock on the shoreline -- who says good souvenir's cost money? That evening after dinner, a small group of us wandered up to the New Jerusalem to an area where youth hang out and grabbed some ice cream at a street cafe, and on the way back experienced an interesting Orthodox Jewish street performance group that I will have to describe more in asubsequent posting. Let's just say it was something like Bar Mitzva meets Techno.

Day 3 (Sunday, June 12th) we spent another day in Jerusalem. Visits in the morning focused on Jerusalem during the time of King David and later King Hezekiah. We saw ruins of the Jerusalem David conquored from the Canaanites, Hezekiah's Tunnel and Hezekiah's Borad Wall, the Pool of Siloam, The Temple ruins from the time of Jesus under King Herod's rule, the Temple Mount both historically and modern day, and some ruins of rich man's villas dating from the time of King Herod that lie in a center under the houses of the Jewish quarter. We then spent our afternoon enjoying Shwarma Laffa's (Kabab wraps) in the Jewish Quarter, broused through the different Souks (markets) as we cut back across the historic city, and wandered a bit in the Muslim Quarter.

So, as you can see we have been busy and have really had a great time learning more about Jewish and Israeli culture. It also has brought our faith to light as we have been learning of and visiting more recent archaeological finds that reinforce the integrity of the historical accounts found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. But more on that later.....

Next stop on Monday, more Jerusalem and then Bethlehem.

More to come soon......
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Three weeks behind on travel plans, but Israel and Vienna await

So apologies as I am about 4 weeks behind on blogging so get ready for a long entry. We are also about 3 weeks behind on arranging our travel plans as Stephen's dad fell unexpectedly ill following a fall and hip fracture and subsequently passed away. So needless to say we fell behind during the 2-2.5 week unplanned trip back to Denver over the second half of May.

Some plus-es, though, while we were there were the time spent with family that came in, catching up with my cousin Lori who lives there, I had a job interview while there, and we decided to book a trip to Israel -- the last of the Spring season.

We are well behind, though, on our other travel plans and moving plans, and have found out Stephen will have to do some pre-reading for his MBA programme which means we reasonably need to get to Denver no later than mid August to allow him time to do that.

With time being crunched from both ends on our travels, we have decided to change our travel plans a bit. We of course have Israel June 9-18, and then we decided to add 3 days in Vienna on the way back since our flights were connecting through there.

We've also decided to save India and Nepal for a subsequent trip. Steve is still very keen to do the OzBus London to Sydney trip, and these countries would be covered by that trip. So we've decided to put this portion of our Summer 2011 trip on hold for a year or two to see if we can make the OzBus fit into our lives somewhere before we have kids. If not, we'll take a 3-4 week stand alone trip to India and Nepal in the upcoming years. (My mother has said that she'll help watch any little ones we have by that point to make sure we don't miss out on this. It is SOOOO good to know our mothers are both supportive of helping out so we don't have to give up travel completely once kids come along).

We are still planning on Laos and Thailand, though, and are looking to extend our time there to 4-5 weeks to really dig in to the culture and landscape. We have yet to book it, but we are looking at a company called StrayTravel.com/asia which operates a hop-on, hop-off guided service through northern Thailand and the entire length of Laos. We were just going to do the northern leg of that trip, but now we're looking to do the 'Full Moon' which includes jungles, heritage sights, elephant rides, journey's down the Mekong River and stays in remote villages. On top of that we'll have 3-4 days in Bangkok on either side of that excursion, and hopefully a 3-4 day stay at a Thai beach resort in Phuket or Koh Samui. We expect we'll leave London for Thailand/Laos sometime the week of July 10th.

So we're off to Israel this afternoon for 10 days on a Holy Land tour with OakHall.co.uk, then 3.5 days in Vienna beginning on June 18th.

We've been talking about doing both a trip to Israel and a trip to Vienna for 4-5 years now, so it is exciting to see it happening. We're also extra excited about Vienna because we'll be meeting up with our friends Carol and Herb Traxler!

Well, it's off to Israel! I'll try to keep you posted on our adventures along the way should I get a good wi-fi signal.

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