A trip to Israel for tennis tournaments with my daughter. First of all, I would like to mention that I am mother of a tennis player (her “Momager” as she likes to say). Her name is Stefi. She started playing tennis from a very early age, from around 4 years old. A long time – I know! But when you enter this circle of tennis you cannot stop. It depends a lot about the players’ wish. There is a lot of hard work that goes into creating a tennis player; from her, her team and her family.
In this blog I won’t really write about tennis and the results in Stefi’s tournaments. I will mainly write about the places we have been to and the process to reach to our planned destination. I hope that my blog will help someone, one day, who would like to visit the places we have been to. I would love also to give more details and to help with the travel plans.
I will start with the last trip we have been but time to time I will post also from the old trips too.
Israel in this time of pandemic situation was quite difficult to enter, we had to submit a lots of documents not to stay in quarantine and to get the entry approval. For the tennis players and me as accompany person we had special regime to get the entry approval, there was a form on the tournament website and we had to submit it to the organizers. A few funny moments I remember, usually I am kind of person that till I am not sure that the situation and the place is safe, I will not go, so I called the organizer, I sent emails to be sure that all papers are ok or not till the person in the end of my call was really fed up with me and he replied ” madam I told you there is no isolation” 🙂
I can tell you it was not an easy process, so we had to print many documents to have it with us for check in. As an administration and HR person working many years with papers and documents I like to have all the documents arranged so I printed out all the documents and filled it in a folder so in the airport when I took out my folder the lady in the counter check few pages and let me go no need to check more 🙂 .
During this period with the Covid we had to do PCR test before departure with 72 h and PCR test when we reached in the Tel Aviv airport. I was surprised, everything was arranged there but if you didn’t had the payment for the test, test booking and the QR code received by email you couldn’t get tested. for your info this is the page for the test in Tel Aviv airport https://testngo.femi.com/he/sign-in. But I was surprised that when we left Israel there are different companies for the test and not the one we came in, check the following page in case you need it. https://check2fly.co.il/en/. By the way nobody is running after you to tell you where to go in the airport, there were scanners for passport and you cannot get out from the airport if you do not make the test and have the yellow brace on your hand like you have been to the concert.
So after the test in Israel we had to stay 24h in quarantine to wait for the result, but till in the evening we got the results, but be sure to have a roaming phone to receive the sms that the result is ready and after login you need to receive the code on the same mobile you added it in the application. The mobile no with roaming is one of the most important to travel there, if there is no connection will be quite difficult.
Our destination has been Haifa a quite nice city on the sea side and also on the hill. Travel from Tel Aviv till Haifa was around 2 h by train which you can get it from the airport directly. The price was just around 40 shekels per person. Can be used cash, cards. By the way in the airport there are exchange shop, better change some money for your daily expenses.
Finally we got to Haifa, I forgot to mention we have been also with another player and her mum, it was perfect formula to have more fun, the girls to be able to train and to share the accommodation. Our accommodation was little bit far way from the club around 27 bus station but the public transportation in Israel is very developed, only be sure you have the yellow card for the bus or the application moovitapp to be able to pay with the QR code scanned from the bus, be sure again you have 4G, the bus has internet but not all the time.
As I said Israel is one of the country with high technology and connected online, for many services you have Qr code to find out the informations you need.
Do not worry the country is safe, even you travel with the train quite full with military people traveling to their job.
In Haifa be carefully of the wild pigs roaming around after 8 o’clock in the evening . It happened to our friend, meeting up at the house door while having a cigarette, we saw them even during the day in the bus station. During the night you could hear jackals howling.
The weekend in Israel is Friday and Saturday, If Friday you still have some options to buy something till afternoon, Saturday nothing is open, even the train station or bus station, but after 3 pm start working few lines.
I didn’t expect that the tennis club to be very developed, 20 courts with very fast surface and from the club you could see The Mediterranean Sea. You can enjoy the beach on The Mediterranean Sea with a perfect weather.
to be continued……
