Shalom from Tel Aviv!

Thursday was our travel day. We had to leave our Venice hotel pretty early in the morning to catch our flight to Istanbul. The four hour layover there was worth it because after that, we caught our plane to Tel Aviv, Israel! I was super excited about this part of the trip and I think Mike was, too. By the time we arrived in Tel Aviv, picked up our rental car and made it to our friends Kristy and David's house (David is also Olmsted Scholars), it was almost 9:00pm and we were exhausted. We stayed up a little bit and caught up, but by 10:00, we were all ready for bed.

Friday started out early with David and Kristy as our tour guides.  We headed outside of the city to a park that had a lot of old caves.  It reminded Mike and I of Cappadocia because it had a lot of similar characteristics, such as cave drawings and pigeon holes.    

 These flowers only bloom for like 2-3 weeks out of the year.  We missed seeing the majority of them in bloom, but we found a few scattered about.

These aren't the actual drawings, but they've been redone to look like the originals.  Super cool!

I just loved how green it was in Israel! such a nice change from the city life of Izmir!

So many pigeon holes! They used the pigeon poop for a lot of fertilizers and other resources

After exploring the caves, we headed downtown for a little beach scene.  I wasn't too impressed with the actual city of Tel Aviv (it seemed like just another big city), but the beach was pretty and the warm weather was nice.

Don't worry that's not a real person.  

I spy a Turkish flag!

That night, David, Kristy, the kids and Mike and I all headed down to Jaffa for dinner.  I really liked this part because it really felt like an old city with cobblestone streets and high walls on the water. The dinner we all had was great and it was a great way to end the day.

Apparently if you get caught on camera peeing, you can become a YouTube star....

Our wonderful hosts! Thanks David and Kristy!

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