"One more tel?" he'd ask.
"Hotel!" came our emphatic reply.

Not everyone understood Remy's clever joke, a tour guide full of good deals. Bottled water for a buck. Lunch buffets, ten US dollars. Who to trust with our credit cards, "What's said on the bus, stays on the bus! Good deal?"

Connecting flight at Heathrow in the wee hours. Tim enjoyed a window seat, both take-offs in local time daylight. Starting to recognize the same faces of co-travelers, some already wearing their branded name tags. Tim and I met Robert, the man whose Kenyan passport would snag our immigration into Jordan, while checking in at JFK. He found his way into the background of many of my pictures. We ate dinner together while in Amman, but my conversation was no match for his friends' texts.

Upon arriving in Netanya, our room was not ready due to the sabbath, so I took Tim out a short distance to the Mediterranean.

Many shop signs in French.

The ruckus in Netanya that evening over the World Cup was all for Russia (but they lost). The shabbat hotel elevator took us to the top floor, then down a floor at a time. We were on 3. Tim liked that the TV welcomed us. We stayed in six hotels over nine nights and several greeted us this way:

Tim slept on a made-up sofa bed.

I set the air conditioner too cold and by Monday developed sneezing, congestion and eventually a cough.

That first morning I had no appetite. I didn't find the dining room sufficiently cold for the cheeses and other dairy products that constitute kosher breakfast.

We drove up the coast to Haifa and visited two sites associated with Elijah: Stella Maris Monastery (his hideout cave) and El-Muhraqa (his confrontation with the prophets of Baal). It was difficult to visit churches because, being Sunday, they were in use. We were a week ahead of the optional Marian feast, OLMC, that falls on July 16^th.

Tim took an interest in the Latin Vulgate inscriptions on the monuments. We became aware that one man in our group was a professional photographer. We paid attention to things he found interesting. Lunch was chicken shawarma for Tim and falafel for me. Surprisingly, it was the only time we ate this typical food.

A man named Kerke approached me after lunch, dragging on a cigarette, to inquire whether my son was safe. He said, as a former teacher, he was always on the lookout for special needs students. I told him he had nothing to worry about and thanked him for his concern.

On the flight over, Kerke and his bride had seats immediately ahead of us. They put atrocious programs on their TV screens, reclined and fell asleep. Then woke up to cuddle. She knew nothing about receiving holy communion at mass. The first time, back in the pew, she asked him, "Have you eaten yours already?" as she held hers. On all subsequent occasions, she picked it from the priest's hand. I thought Kerke could have coached her better so she could pass, but he seemed fairly lapsed himself. Besides, she wasn't the only non-Catholic receiving communion every day. One of the Franciscans tried to persuade her to get her husband to give up smoking. The last evening, with an open bar, he touched my knee a couple of times to make a point, and she saw another side of him.

Mass that day, Sunday, was inside the Church of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. Another group asked our tour guide to take their picture. At first, they spoke together in English but switched easily over to French. I am so impressed by the ability of those in the tourist industry to identify others and address them in their own language.

The taxi ride up and down the mountain can be unnerving due to switchbacks. It felt as if we were up there on that mountain a very long time. Then we made our way to Tiberias for a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. The hotel that evening had a small beach access to the Sea. I waded in after dinner, chilly and fish nibbled. But the sunset against the hills along the Sea was still, calm, peaceful and despite the summertime heat, I slept well.