Israel. Pesach 2022. Day 12. What Do You Mean You Have Floaties?
We got up and went to breakfast. Is there any other way to start the day?
Same nice chametz breakfast, except I was kind of in a rush because I had made plans to meet with friends who I haven’t seen since middle school. Before I get to that I should mention that my mother took her daily Covid test, and surprise surprise, she finally tested positive! Of course, notwithstanding that she’s spent the last four days telling everyone that she feels fine and there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s now claiming that she’s on Day 4 because she’s felt sick since Thursday. Hey, whatever works.
[Tzvi: Today at breakfast they had this bread cup thing with a soft egg inside. It was pretty delicious. They also had all of the other great breads. So many breads. So little stomach space.]
Anyway, I was supposed to meet Lisa Shapiro and Michelle Zomberg, who are now Tzipora Leah and Mindel, except Mindel got sick, so I ended up just meeting Tzipora Leah. I took a cab to somewhere in Ramat Eshkol where there were some cafes and a grocery store and a bank. We were going to sit down at a café, but I told her I was happy to just go with her to run errands since I didn’t need another coffee and she was out with her 3 week old and probably had things she needed to get done. So she took me to the bank and to the grocery store. She just had her 7th kid (yes, she’s my age). It was so funny talking to her because she’s still the same as she was in middle school, but also totally different. It was so interesting to hear about her life and what it’s like here. She told me a little bit about how they live and her husband’s life in kolel. I held her 3 week old, which gave me more anxiety than baby fever, so that’s good. It was just so nice to see her and it really felt like so much time had passed but no time has passed. We only communicate by email because she has a kosher phone so she can’t text or whatsapp. I was like, ‘how do you talk to people? I spend my whole day texting.’ She said she calls people and speaks to them. What a novel concept. It was sad I couldn’t see Mindel, but she has Whatsapp so we’ve been talking a bit. There is a photo of me and Tzipora Leah, but I don’t have it because she took it on her digital camera and hasn’t been able to send it yet. I do have a picture with her baby though.
After that I went back to the hotel, where I realized I had lost 300 shekel (about $100). So that was great. Basically, my taxi app wasn’t working when I left the hotel, so I asked Tzvi to give me cash in case I needed it. For some reason he gave me all of the cash he had, which I proceeded to put in my phone case and then lose in the taxi. Robyn spent a half hour trying to get in touch with the taxi driver, but he said he didn’t have the money. I only made it back because I paid for something at the grocery store with my credit card for Tzipora Leah and she gave me cash. Oy.
When I got back, I found everyone at the pool.
[Tzvi: We stayed at breakfast until about 10:15, then went to the room to change and headed to the pool. We had no problem getting day beds since it seems everyone has left the hotel now that chag is over. There was another family in the pool with little kids who were wearing floaties. As soon as they saw Madeleine they came over to me and said ‘you know they have floaties in the closet.’ Excuse me? You mean all this time when the life guard kept telling me Madeleine couldn’t swim without floaties and I told him that we didn’t have floaties, they actually had extra floaties that we could’ve been using? Amazing. Anyway, I asked the lifeguard and he gave me a pair of floaties, which were actually great because they’re fabric (instead of just plastic), so they’re really easy to get on and off. Madeleine absolutely loved swimming with the floaties and kept saying “No hold me! No hold me!” She had the best time and stayed in the pool for over an hour. By the end I had to pee really badly, but she didn’t want to get out.]
It was already past lunch time and we needed to feed the kids so I ordered schnitzel and fries from the rooftop restaurant, but it took forever. Grant was also there having his last meal before getting on the 5pm flight home. Once the food did come Hallie decided she didn’t want any but Madeleine ate the whole thing; she was probably so hungry from swimming so much.
Bye Grant.
Both girls were beat so we decided Hallie could stay home with Robyn and watch her tablet and we would take Madeleine on a walk so she could sleep in the stroller. We took a really long walk all the way up to Mamilla, where we met our friends Aliza and Yehuda Beilin who actually live in Brooklyn but have been staying in Tel Aviv and came to Jerusalem for the day. We walked through Mamilla with them for a few minutes, then we walked up to Ben Yehuda Street so we could get pastries and coffees at Ne’eman, which is really the best slushy iced coffee but has been closed all week. Tzvi also got a bag full of borekas which he ate all of and enjoyed, and we got some chocolate pastries that were delicious. I hadn’t really eaten lunch so I got a tuna sandwich at Aroma, but it took forever to get. Maybe now that chag is over and most tourists are gone the restaurant workers have relaxed and everything has slowed down.
We walked all the way back to the hotel, which took about 20 minutes. When we got back, Robyn and Hallie met us across the street at the Tachana. Now that the chag was over the station was pretty empty. We rode all of the rides – the little train that goes from one end of the station to the other, the carousel and the Ferris wheel. The girls had fun. Hallie also got a slushy that was blue and pink. Like I think that was the flavor – blue and pink.
When we got back to the room we found they had left us a platter of little desserts. That was nice for our last night.
We showered and decided that it was too much to do another sit down dinner at a restaurant, so we decided to go to the Malcha Mall. I feel like we used to go there on every Israel trip but then we just stopped at some point. I had forgotten that it’s actually not so close to the center of Jerusalem and took almost a half hour to get to. It was really nice though. I had my one and only schwafel (shawarma + felafel in a laffa) of the trip, Tzvi had a sabich sandwich (fried eggplant in a pita) and the kids had pizza. The girls also had fun riding the little carousel in the food court. It had three seats, so we paid for it and then another girl randomly jumped on the empty seat. It was fine though because then another kid came and paid and Hallie and Madeleine got a free ride.
We walked around for a bit and did some shopping. We were on a mission to find my dad a new hat because he had left his Islanders hat in the hotel room. Well, we obviously weren’t finding an Islanders hat at the Malcha Mall, but we were surprised at how difficult it was to find any hat. For some reason the only hats we could find were these weird hats that had animals and odd things printed on them, like one that had a unicorn and said LEGEND. We thought about getting him a hat that said SILVER FOX, but decided against it. Eventually we found a Tommy Hilfiger hat that was plain enough, so we bought it, only we didn’t realize that it cost 200 shekel (which is $60). Whoops. Enjoy your hat dad!
(By the way, they seemed to be selling these hats in every store in the mall. If anyone knows the story behind these things and why they sell them everywhere and does anyone actually buy these??? please let me know. Thanks.)
We made a final stop at Ne’eman where we bought more pastries and a giant donut that looked amazing and for some reason was still being sold in a box that said Have a Delicious Hanukkah. Maybe we waited to long to eat it – by the time we did (later that night) it was kind of dried out.
We got a cab back to the hotel and then spent some time packing. I think the end-of-trip anxiety had really started to set in at that point. We were just so anxious about leaving the next day and having to take our Covid tests in the morning (you need a negative test to get on the plane to go home). We had been around my mom for days and just couldn’t see a way that one of us didn’t turn up positive. It was just mentally exhausting.
And that wasn’t even the most stressful part of the night, but I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow…