Israel. Pesach 2022. Day 4. Forty-Five Minutes by the Sea.
Last night was rough.
I think I went to sleep around 1245ish. Hallie woke up around 4:30 for “water” and when I put her back in bed, Madeleine was up but went back to sleep and let me leave, but of course I was awake. Then at 6am Madeleine started crying and was so upset she wouldn’t let me in Hallie’s bed alone, so I had to pick her up and lay in Hallie’s bed with Madeleine sleeping on my chest. Obviously I didn’t sleep because it felt like I had an elephant (albeit a cozy one) on me. So then I was just up and we laid there with Madeleine sleeping.
Eventually Hallie got up, and then we all got up by 7:45 and packed up because today we are switching rooms! Very exciting. I hope this room will not be a disappointment. We went to breakfast around 8:45 and got ready for our day in Tel Aviv!
Now, as you can see from the stroller photo, it looked like we were spending a week in Tel Aviv instead of a day, but what can you do.
We got in this big Mercedes van, which is the van that Avner SHOULD have sent when we left the airport, and made our way to Tel Aviv. The problem was we didn’t have a destination. We’ve been planning this trip for a year but all we said was “we’ll go to Tel Aviv on Sunday.”
My mom got a recommendation to go to Hilton Beach, except you can’t just walk in through the Hilton Hotel as a non-guest and use their beach. So, the driver let us off by the Carlton. We started walking around in one direction to look for a place to sit, except every beach said “no swimming” because they were for water sports (but no one was actually doing any water sports), so we walked back in the other direction. We eventually just sat down and saw people going in the water. After a while the lifeguard would yell at them to get out, and the cycle went on and on. Thing was, by the time we actually got settled on the beach, we only had about 45 minutes before we had to be back at the van so we could get to our lunch reservation on time. Tensions were running pretty high by that point. Everyone was kind of annoyed, but Tzvi just kept smiling and saying how nice it was, which was more annoying than if he had been doing his normal complaining.
Madeleine is an expert at applying sunscreen to other people
We stayed on the beach until about 12:30ish and then went back to the parking lot where the driver let us off. Me, Tzvi, the girls, Avery and Gabs sat around waiting for a while but didn’t know where my parents had gone. Eventually my mother called and said they had been waiting for us down the road for ten minutes. She was mad at my father for not telling us to walk to the van, so she made him sit alone in the back.
It took about a half hour to drive across the city to a café called Lorenz and Minz, which was maybe the only restaurant in the entire city of Tel Aviv that was serving a kitniyot free lunch. The restaurant was basically a nice outdoor garden with a buffet inside. Thankfully it wasn’t terribly hot. The buffet had great cauliflower and decent tuna. There was also pizza and gnocchi and some salads. The food was actually all pretty good.
For some reason Gabriella didn’t like this photo, but I liked it, so I’ve edited her out.
We stayed for a while and then got back on the bus and planned to go to the port. The driver said it would take 15-20 minutes. Now, the problem was this driver wasn’t using Waze. Also, this man has lived in Israel for 30 years so he should know that this main road in Tel Aviv is always packed. Anyway, the drive ended up taking about 45 minutes. All this time I had been texting Ofek, our first au pair, because we wanted to see her. She watches kids during the day so she ended up brining the three kids to meet us at the port. Hallie had no idea what we were planning and when she saw Ofek she was so excited and gave her the biggest hug. It was such a nice reunion for the both of them. I stayed with Hallie and Ofek (and the three kids she was watching) at this indoor arcade, while everyone else walked around the port. The arcade had some cute rides and Hallie had a really nice time. She kept saying she just wanted to stay with Ofek but we all had to go home eventually.
[Tzvi: I walked from one end of the port to the other with Madeleine and Lisa and Sheldon. I think Avery and Gabs stayed back because they needed to stay in the shade. We found the carousel and I tried to take Madeleine on but she just cried. Then Lisa took her on and she still cried but eventually was okay. Then we went looking for ice cream. At the first store we stopped at my mother asked about kitniyot and then had to explain what it was. They told her the gluten free flavors were kitniyot free, but we decided to see what else we could find. We tried another ice cream store, but no one there could figure out what “kitniyot” was. They kept asking us to just speak English. We ended up getting slushy iced coffee from Aroma, which was very refreshing. Then my mother went back to the first ice cream store she had been to and they again said there was no kitniyot in the gluten free flavors, and just not to get the one with the pretzels. Turns out, it wasn’t even kosher for pesach. Oy.]
We got back on the bus and headed back to Jerusalem. I think we observed that for a guy who drives for a living, this driver didn’t seem to enjoy driving. Anyway, the drive back was fine. Tablets were used by both children and when we finally arrived at the hotel all our luggage was moved into our new room! Our new room is in the main building on the 6th floor. It’s a corner room, so, similar to the previous room setup there’s an outer door that closes off the hallway outside our rooms so you can just keep the two room doors open and have a two room suite. The rooms are so much more modern and luxurious feeling than the boutique rooms we started with. Both rooms have tubs and balconies. Our room is actually the corner of the hotel, so we have a balcony overlooking the old city, and then our bathroom has a balcony overlooking the front of the hotel. We also have a big clawfoot tub next to the window, so we’ll be able to bathe and watch people coming and going in the front of the hotel.
We unpacked and at this point it was 6:30 and the girls were going nuts. Thankfully, Tzvi planned with my mom that she would take the girls and we would get a dinner out. They tried to go to the rooftop restaurant, but the hostess said they didn’t allow kids, so they ended up just ordering room service. You would think the 12 times we asked about this rooftop restaurant (while holding children) someone would have told us they don’t allow kids at night.
Tzvi and took showers in our new room. It was nice, but we immediately saw that the shower drain was clogged so we had to call a man to fix that. Then we headed to Mamilla for dinner and ended up at Café Rimon, which was delicious. We shared a cauliflower starter, I had a niçoise salad and Tzvi had a sweet potato salad. They also gave us Pesach bread, which came with salsa and salad dressing. Why? Because it’s Israel. After dinner we got some ice cream and I bought these pink pants that I wonder if I’ll ever wear.
After we got back we opened a bottle of the free wine they had given us and I took a bath by the open window while watching the Mets on my computer. Great end to a really nice day.
I hope I sleep tonight.
