Quality of Life

I love travel, but I just do not get enough vacation time from work to leave town as often as I would like. Rather than wait until retirement, I figured out a way to go on more trips more often. A month or two ago, I let my manager know that I loved to travel, and would love to go on more business trips. It worked!

At the beginning of August, I was sent to Israel for a three-day meeting. We (one program manager was on the trip with me) left on Sunday afternoon, got there on Monday, and had meetings on Tuesday (which ended early) and Wednesday. Since the meetings were so successful, we took Thursday off. Flight home left early Friday, and I was back home Friday afternoon.

The hotel we stayed in is on the hill in Haifa. Here is a view out my window:

On Tuesday after the meeting was over we drove to Akko, which is an old city on the Mediterranean Sea. Here I am, in front of the sea, the ruins of an old sea wall, and a random tour bus:

This is the most foreign place I have ever visited, and the most ancient. Humans have been here for at least 5000 years, building and destroying and building again. So there are incredibly historic places and structures with modern buildings alongside, sometimes integrated into the old walls and foundations. Not quite preservation, and not quite "urban renewal" demolition, just human history visible everywhere.

On Thursday we drove to Tiberius, on western side of the Sea of Galilee. Not having enough energy to do an extensive tour of all the historic sites in the area, we just walked for a while on the sidewalk that runs next to the shore. Unlike the Mediterranean Sea, or even Lake Michigan, you can see the other side of the Sea of Galilee from the shore. And, it has litter and graffiti and a water-park alongside the Roman ruins and sacred graveyards. People live here, and this is the lake in their "front yard."

Bonus: when traveling overseas, company policy is to buy Business Class tickets!

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