Sunday 01-06 - Arrival

We were exhausted and woke up and packed our bags. We had brekkie downstairs at the restaurant and then took the small topdeck bus to the air port. We shared the bus with John the New Yorker, who was flying home to start work. We were met by the same guy that met us when we arrived. He took us through the Visa and exit tax areas. Our fight was delayed until 11-45am, so we had quite a few hours. In Egyptian pounds we only had the equivalent of about 3 aussie dollars left. It was enough for an orange juice from McDonalds, who only had coffee, OJ and some breakfast menu foods.

We flew over to Amman. We expected our next flight to leave at 4pm (2 and a half hour wait),but our ticket for the next flight said 6pm. I was exhausted and starting to feel like the Egyptian water was catching up with my stomach. So we waited around for a while. At 3pm we checked the departure board and low and behold, our light leaving at 4 and the ticket was wrong. Suddenly I felt so much better and more awake. We arrived at the security check for the gate area, but wouldn't be let through. At 4-15, no one had been let through yet. Finally the whole planes worth of people were let in and got onto the plane, where we sat for almost half an hour. Turns out we were waiting for 23 people still in transit from another flight.

The girl who eventually sat down next to me turned out to be one of those people. Their tickets had also said 6, so they had been rushed through when they realised and got to the airport from the hotel they were staying at between flights.

We flew royal jordanian, so their was no clapping as we landed in the holy land, as I heard there is on El Al flights. Seeing everything in Hebrew was quite amazing. It made me realise how little Hebrew I remembered from school, but the longer I stayed in Israel the more started coming back. Hebrew banks and Hebrew adds and Hebrew time out magazine.

We taxied to Momo's Hostel and checked in. Quite happy with the rooms. Slightly small and spartan, but cosy and clean. We were situated right in the middle of the downtown, slightly scragally, lots of rainbow flags type area of Ben Yehuda street. We were a street from the beach, with the sun setting over the ocean just after we checked in. Its the type of street that's covered in band posters and hostels and travel agents to other countries. We walked up and down both sides of it until we found a supermarket. We filled up on supplies, which in this case was bread, tuna, nutella, apples, plastic zip bags and some basic cutlery.

For dinner we found a falafel place and had schnitzel in pita with hummus and tahini and salad. Then we pretty much fell asleep.