We arrived on Dec. 25th on time and arrived at the Dan Panorama Hotel in Tel Aviv. Since our rooms were not ready and we were exhausted we knew we had to push through the day and try to stay awake. We walked right outside our hotel to the beach and the Mediterranean Sea. We had lunch at a place right on the water called "Yossi's" and ate our first schnitzel, hummus, and Israeli salad of the trip, walked through Old Jaffa and headed back to our hotel for a little nap.  We had dinner with Michael's friend Udi and his family at an Italian place called Bellini-it was Udi's birthday so we all sang happy birthday in hebrew and english.
Our first full day was packed. First of all, our tour guide got stuck in a snowstorm in Germany so we had a 'sub' tourguide today. Our driver, Adi, and the tour guide, Yotom (he told us to say...Yo..Tom) both did a great job of showing us the sites. We started our day in Jerusalem and drove to Mount Olives. Here we were able to go to a lookout point and he showed us all of the quarters of Jerusalem and pointed out the mosques, temples, cemetaries and gave us the history of the city. The highlight was when some of the kids sat on the camel and when the camel stood up unexpectedly!!  Then we went to the Western Wall. We had all prepared our notes and we separated the men and the women and went to the wall to stick our notes in.  It was a moving experience for all of us and we even saw someone from Jeff Lakes Camp that the kids knew.  We had lunch in a Muslim section of Jerusalem and most of the group ate the best falafel they ever had.  After we took a long tour of the City of David and went in a water tunnel where the spaces were very tight. At one point it was so low that Al had to duck and we were uncertain if he would fit. A bit claustophobic in there. We climbed about a million stairs, but Michael had to redo the trek as he left his camera case down in the tunnel.  At the end of the day we split up to do some souvenir shopping and we purchased Emma her tallis at a beautiful shop in the Jewish quarter. She will wear it tomorrow at her Bat Mitzvah at the Davidson Center.  We ended the day with a delicious meal at a restaurant in Tel Aviv right on the water called Manta Ray. We are all exhausted still trying to adjust to the time change. Our tour guide is back and will be with us tomorrow and we are happy not to be in the blizzard in NJ. The weather was absolutely beautiful today.