Having never been to Israel before, I was fascinated – and a little nervous – to see what the country would be like.In travelling to Tel Aviv, I had two options.  There were El Al flights available at sensible times of the day.  They were eye-wateringly expensive.  Or I could take a Lufthansa flight that was much cheaper, but got me in to Tel Aviv around 0200.  Of course, I had to do the latter.

I left Edinburgh around 2300 on a Sunday evening.  The first leg of the trip took me to Frankfurt, and then I walked to the gate for the flight to Tel Aviv.  This was in the most distant and most obscure part of the airport, and I felt as if I was walking to Israel!  But eventually I got to the gate, through a further level of security and onto my flight.

From there, I had to take a taxi to Haifa.  That was when things started to get a little uncomfortable.  As we travelled on the motorway, another taxi drew alongside and the two drivers started to have a (shouted) conversation with each other.  After a little while, my taxi driver drew over to the hard shoulder and told me that he was transferring to the other taxi.

Bearing in mind that this was now about 0400 and pitch dark, it seemed like the kind of thing that all of the “safe travelling” guides tell you not to do.  But in reality, what was I going to do?  My taxi driver had decided he wasn’t going to take me any further, and I could hardly force him to keep driving?

So, reluctantly, I got into the other cab, and we set off.  I’m glad to say that this driver did exactly what he was supposed to do, and after a little more travelling we reached Le Meridien Hotel, Haifa (which has since been renamed the Leonardo Hotel).

I got to bed around 0600, so I had been careful to ensure that I wasn’t seeing the customer on the Monday.  Instead, I had the Monday free to myself, and I would see the customer on the Tuesday.  That left the Monday free to enjoy the promenade and beach in front of Haifa’s technology park.

The technology park itself is pretty huge, with many well-known names from the global tech industry.  The park is directly across the road from a beautiful Mediterranean beach, the promenade stretching further than I chose to walk through the day.

The place was strange.  The beach was lovely, in many ways the kind of place you would happily go on holiday.

The workers would come out at lunchtime to enjoy the beach, and in some ways there was a bit of a hippy feeling to it

And yet you never quite were able to forget that this was a country under siege, with warships and helicopters in the bay, and armed guards visible all around.

The next day I was shown around the town.  It was chilling to look over the town and be told the various places where people had been killed by suicide bombings and other attacks.   We also came upon a wedding at the Bahai Gardens – a sacred site of the Bahai religion.

The journey home was much less eventful.  What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the grilling at Ben Gurion airport, where the soldier on duty asked me questions for what seemed like forever before even letting me get on to customs. 

It was one of the stranger business trips I’ve ever been on.

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