Day 0/1 - Friday/Saturday, January 20-21, 2023
We left home at 9:15 am and headed to Hilton LAX where we are leaving our car for the princely sum of $160. Even if the shuttle isn't great (the driver was nice, but with one shuttle it's not super timely), it's cheap enough we can just Uber.
We got to LAX with enough time to hit United Club for about 25 minutes before boarding - just long enough for my mom to have a bowl of clam chowder, eat some fruit and for us to use the restrooms. While they're not fancy, they're a lot bigger than the teeny tiny lavatories on the airplane. I'm short and not super big, how do bigger and taller people pee on airplanes? The space is so small!
Because of my parents' lifetime gold status with United, for the first leg of our flight we were in the premium plus seats. These are pretty comparable to Singapore's premium economy seats. Wider seat, bigger pitch, leg rest and overall a nicer cabin. It's a small section though, only about 4 rows, and we were in the middle of the bulkhead row with some poor man seated next to my dad.
We backed up and started to taxi, and all of a sudden we stopped. Over the intercom the captain said a warning light came on and maintenance has been contacted and for us to sit tight. My PTSD from our last trip kicked in and I started getting super anxious about missing our connecting flight to Tel Aviv. Fortunately the problem was easily repaired and we were on our way and arrived in Dulles only 5 minutes past our scheduled arrival.
It was a nice and easy 5 hour flight - easy because I spent most of it asleep or dozing. Because our flight out was at 12:45, we didn't have to get up super early today, but while I slept well, I started waking up intermittently after 5 am.
We arrived in Dulles, just a gray and kinda sad looking airport (but they have a Chik Fil A! So it can't be that bad) with over an hour before boarding our next flight to Tel Aviv. We walked to the United Club that was super close to our gate and entered the almost empty club. It was quiet, and while the lighting in the dining area was cold and gray looking, the rest of the lounge had nice soft lighting and was filled with big comfy chairs.
United has upped their lounge game! Still not as nice as the centurion lounges, but better than the coffee and crackers they used to have. We had red pepper and gouda bisque, turkey sandwiches, cheese and grapes, and they had a mac and cheese bar which sounds much more impressive than it actually was. It was overcooked noodles in a watery cheese sauce that needed some salt. They did have bacon bits, and enough bacon makes everything better. So even though I would've given the mac and cheese a C-, it was elevated to a C+ by the bacon.
We left the lounge at 9:50 for out boarding at 9:55. We arrived at our gate, D3, to see it surrounded by temporary walls with a long long line. It turns out flights into Israel require a secondary screening. Our boarding passes and passports were checked again, our carry ons were swabbed for explosives, and we were wanded and fondled from head to toe. It was not cool.
Because of that, by the time we boarded our overhead bins were full, so I stuck my underseat bag in the premium economy bin in the row in front of my seat. The seats are narrower than the ones we had in premium plus, but we had great legroom because of the wall in front of us.
An hour and a half into the flight we were fed dinner. The choices were between chicken and stir fried noodles. We all picked the chicken and I was pleasantly surprised. It reminded me of poor man's butter chicken - it was chicken and rice with a slightly spicy tomato based sauce. The salad was not tasty but we got milk bar cookies for dessert, which I hoarded and hid away in my bag for later. I had one later in the hotel and it's not bad! Birthday cake-ish, a tad too sweet, but a nice soft texture.
The flight was a little over 10 hours long. I took melatonin, but because the recline of the seats was not great, I couldn't get comfortable. My mom konked out but she didn't sleep well the night before. I dozed, but whiled away the time listening to Julia Child's My Life in France on audible and watching YouTube videos I downloaded. I ended up watching Bullet Train which I had downloaded from Netflix (surprisingly charming) and Netflix's best of comedy from 2022 compilation. We were served breakfast about 2 hours before landing and it wasn't bad! We all opted for the egg dish and it was an egg scramble with cheese, peppers and sausage and with some squirts of sriracha (because of course I travel with some) it was pretty tasty. I felt super thirsty throughout the flight, I apparently slept through both rounds of water distribution and bummed a bottle off my dad. I was so dehydrated though that despite the can of apple juice from dinner, a cup of water, a bottle of water and a cup of orange juice at breakfast I never had to pee, and I always have to pee!
Immigration at Israel was shockingly easy. Everyone is directed to these little kiosks where you scan your passport face down and it takes a photo of you. If it matches the document, they issue a little blue pass. We started lining up for immigration but then they waved everyone who had an American passport over and after checking them briefly, they had us walk to these machines (like the ones at subway stations) where we scanned our passports facedown again and then the machines allowed us to pass. Apparently Israel doesn't give stamps in our passports, we're just issued 2 month visas when you enter on a U.S passport and that what the little blue tickets are.
We grabbed our luggage from baggage claim and easily found our Gate 1 rep. After a wait around 15 minutes we headed for our bus. Instead of a big bus, we were loaded into a Mercedes sprinter van. With 10 of us on it, it was pretty comfortable, but I think our driver got lost because it took forever to get to our hotel.
Check in at the Metropolitan Hotel was kind of a mess. The people working the desk were very nice, but there were a ton of loud ass teenagers with British accents from some kind of program and they were just lolling about the lobby being really loud. After standing in line for over 10 minutes some fresh young thing in a tiny tank top tried to cut in front of me. I was about to say something when the cool man behind the desk gestured me over and told her in a firm tone that he already told her she needed to line up and she didn't get to cut in front of all of us trying to check in. Woohoo! I don't know why they were all draped around the lobby - they were there when we checked in at 6pm, after our meeting ended at 7:30, and were still there when we returned from dinner before 9. Why aren't they hanging out in their rooms?! They must have some. Maybe it's a teenager thing. 🤔. There are multiple tour groups in our hotel thoigh. At least two Gate 1 groups are here and at least one Viking group was checking in with us too.
We have adjoining rooms - I'm in a single and my parents are in a double. The hotel is small, but it's a block from the beach, which we can't really see because it was dark when we arrived. My room is really small, but it's clean and comfortable and it has a window you can actually open! I left it open for the night air, which I found more pleasant than the ac. So far it seems like we're hitting good weather - it's in the high 60s and low 70s, so it's not too different from home.
We walked 4 minutes to a nearby market and bought some bottled water before our first meeting with our tour manager. In contrast to the small group we had in March when we did Europe, we have 41 in this tour group, with most of them continuing onto Jordan like us. Henry seems nice, he speaks excellent English and is funny and personable. This is my third Gate 1 trip and my parents' fourth, and we've always liked our tour managers.
We had dinner at the hotel, which isn't something we typically do. But we knew we were going to be tired and we wanted to have a nice meal since it's Chinese New Years Eve, so we paid the 200 shekels per person (just under $60/pp) for the hotel buffet. It's not extensive, but the food is good, it's a nice restaurant with pretty nice atmosphere and more importantly, it was only an elevator ride away from our rooms.
I end the night showering in my teeny tiny shower (it had the old cruise ship curtain 😑. I hate molesting shower curtains!), reorganizing my luggage a bit and falling asleep to the Chiefs and Jaguars game. To be woken up at 3:30 when my mom came into my room looking for the electric kettle. I couldn't fall back asleep so I had some tea, ate a Lindt milk chocolate hazelnut bar, and watched the Eagles game on my tablet. Overall, not a bad first day!
