First day in Tel Aviv

Israel is a very dry country (most of it being desert) and is very low on water, having had below average rainfall for several years. It thundered and poured last night. Most of the day today was just cloudy and extremely windy, but tonight, it's raining hard again. Seems to be trying to make up for the extended drought during our visit!

This morning, we got a little walking tour of Tel Aviv, the high point of which was Danny's 4th floor walkup (get it - the "high" point). Nice apartment - could use a cleaning every couple of months or so. The rest of the tour was rather dull since almost everything was closed due to Shabbes.

Then, Danny and I took a walk along the beach - which was a lot easier walking with the wind rather than against it. The sea was quite angry and the most interesting part of the walk was watching the wind surfers - as you can see. While it looks like fun, it also looks like a lot of work to avoid being dragged out in the Mediterannean, unless they want to visit Cyprus. Hey, maybe we should have tried that last year!

This afternoon and evening, we visited with Susan's cousin Janey, her husband Moshe, dog "Snowy" and their daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddog "Yohushua" (which is the Hebrew name for Joshua, but theirs is cuter than ours). We had a wonderful time discussing families, countries and anything else which came to mind.

Hopefully, the wind will die down tomorrow so I can take a run along the sea and we can do some walking in the city. I mean, this is a desert country, right?