We flew from Ben Gurion International Airport, on El Al Airlines to Istanbul in Turkey.
.:The Airport:.
There are three terminals at the Airport. One is for international flights, another is for domestic flights, and the third is a secret!
Departing
The Airport has 2 levels. You arrive at level one and stand in line for hours until you are checked in.
Because we were flying on El Al, we took our check in luggage to a terminal, (not at the Airport), where we had it checked and received our seat assignments, and baggage checks.
If you aren’t flying on El Al, you will have to check in at least four hours ahead of departure.
We were able to go avoid this and go up the escalator to level two. On this level, you have your hand luggage checked, and often a complete body search.
Then you have your passport and visa stamped. When this is finished, the first thing you’ll see is a place to exchange your money, and if you have any coins left, there is a place to drop them in, and they will be given to various charities.
There is only one coffee shop, and it is not open early, so if you are departing before 9:00 am, I suggest you eat something at your hotel.
The best part are the wonderful Duty Free Shops. This is a real duty free shop, (there are so few in the World: Shannon in Ireland, Sydney Australia and the one in Singapore).
In front of each departure gate there are chairs for you to sit on. If your plane is delayed, you will not be allowed outside of this area. I suggest you bring a good book to read, in case this happens.
Arriving
El Al, travels over the Mediterranean, and you can see the shore line, below you.
When you land you’ll hear a song called, ’’Shalom A’liehem’’, (a fast song that is a prayer for peace).
No plane is allowed to pull up to the terminal, but there will be shuttle buses to take you there.
There will be a long line, once you arrive, and everyone will be trying to push ahead of you. If anyone does this to you, push them back!
Once you pass through passport and visa control, if you’re on a Tour, your Guide will be waiting for you. If you aren’t you will have to go to the three, (well marked), luggage turnstiles.
You have to go through another check. You will see signs that say, ’’Visitors’’ and ’’Israeli’s’’. The Israeli’s will have their luggage checked, but unless you fit a profile, most visitors won’t be stopped.
Out side of the Terminal, are buses and taxi’s that will take you to any place you want to go in Israel.
A warning about the cabs
There is a sign that is written in English, French, Arabic and Hebrew, that tells you the price from the Airport to every place in Israel.
Before you get into the taxi, make sure that the driver agrees on that amount.
.:Istanbul:.
We visited all the places I wrote about in my review, except for a new place that I found.
From biblical times there have been sightings of UFO. Many religious historians think, that the first Pyramids were designed by aliens, and that when Jacob climbed the ladder, and he had wonderful dreams, he was taken to see the inside of a UFO.
In the Middle East the Country that has had the most UFO sightings is Turkey. The Government decided not to hid their findings but to try to explain what the knew, but developing a UFO Museum.
The Museum
We took a tour of the Museum is called the Sirius International Museum, and you can visit it when you are in Istanbul. You’ll find this Museum in the centre of the City, (on the European side).
When you enter the Museum you can choose if you want to take a Turkish Arabic, Turkish English, (until the 1970’s the Turks spoke Arabic, but wrote it in English) or English language tour.
The Exhibition Area
In this section, they document hundreds of UFO incidents and display a lot of drawings, personal documents, books, phonographs and newspaper clippings.
UFO’s & E.T’s are exhibited in separately, (books, photographs, pictures, illustrations and hand written document. The illustrations of the greys, (aliens), made them shorter than the ones I saw in Roswell, New Mexico.
There is a map of the World than shows where there have been UFO sightings, illustrations, and information on them.
Archaeological ruins that have wall paintings that look like aliens. They show the tablets with the inscriptions, describe the ancient cultures that each came from. Then a Guide explains their connections to E.T’s, Crop Circles, Area 51 and other secret bases, Abductions, Animal Mutilations, top secret official documents, NASA cover-ups, MARS, research and analysis reports of Institutions and Universities.
I learned that there were different types of Aliens but did know that about the variety of UFO’s.
We were shown the Aztec symbols from Mexico, Roswell, in New Mexico and Varginha. There are 6 areas in the Museum, where they use statues to show their visitors, these differences.
in which various UFO incidents are represented by models and statues and explained both in Turkish and in English. These include:
The models of Archaeological Ruins that will tell you about the UFO phenomenons.
There were pictures and replica of what happened in Roswell.
I had seen the TV Show that showed an representation of autopsy done on a Roswell Alien.
They explain about the experiments done by aliens who were abducted, from the accounts of those who have been taken, aboard a Space Craft.
In The Library
There are 1, 000s books and magazines, (in English and Turkish), available for people who want to research this subject.
The Video Room
At the end of the tour we went to watch a video on the sightings around the World.
.:My Thoughts:.
I believe that Ben Gurion Airport is the safest in the World.
I hope you get to see Israel and the Airport.
Thanks for reading my review.
©LL2004