Israel, Part 2

Now, that the decision about the tour has been made, the rest of things begin to fall into places. The tour has a specific dates, so air travel needs to be booked appropriately.

There is no direct flight from Chicago to Tel Aviv. That means I had to figure out all the connections. The interesting point is that all the travel agents as well as airlines claim that one needs about 1.5 to 2 hours between flights. However, nobody mentions that the airline closes the doors 30 minutes prior the time of departure. Which means we only would have hour and an half. Also on the way there, if the first lag is not by El Al, getting on El Al will take longer since they have tighter security then any other airline in the world.

On the way back, we have to worry about going thru US customs and immigrations. If we go thru that in Chicago, there is no problem. But if we have to do it at the point of entry, we should have more then 2 hours. Since my daughter had unpleasant experience with it recently, I did not want to take any chances.

After prolong negotiations with the travel agent, we ended up with what I think is pretty decent arrangement:

Chicago->Zurich->Tel Aviv. 3 and a half hours layover in Zurich. Should be enough time.
Tel Aviv->Toronto->Chicago: 2 and a half hours layover in Toronto. I know for a fact that we will have to go thru US customs in Toronto, but 2.5 hours should be enough. I hope.

Travel time is perfect: leaving Chicago and Tel Aviv in the middle of the day! There was a possibility of leaving Tel Aviv at 2:00am local time. That would have been bad.

Last step is to update tripit.com and we are all set to go. Now, I can't wait.

One thing I should probably do is to contact a hotel at Dead Sea and see if they can help making arrangement for early morning trip to Masada (taxi is probably all we need, but I would feel better after talking to some local people)