Israel. Pesach 2022. Day 7. Tuna Bolognese.
There are two questions I hope you ask yourself after reading today’s post.
What is tuna Bolognese?
Why would you order it?
But first…The night was fine but at 6:15 Hallie woke up and asked me to stay with her. Once I laid down Madeleine started stirring and I didn’t want to move. Hallie kept asking me if people were at breakfast. Then we both fell asleep and the next thing we knew it was 9:15.
Today was our first day where we really had nothing planned so we didn’t need to rush! We took our sweet time and headed to breakfast to meet the rest of the family. Tzvi was upset with the table today for breakfast because it was in the claustrophobic side room and it was hard to get anyone to serve us. Though I will say I actually got coffee today. They also had matzah brei, which surprisingly wasn’t bad.
At the end of breakfast we spoke to Eliad Shapiro a bit , who we know from college. He is married to Leora Kanner who I knew from Write On for Israel. Small world.
After breakfast we went back to our room to get ready. Standing on our bathroom balcony we spotted Grant down below on the balcony at the lobby restaurant. We started yelling his name, then realized he looked like he was in an important meeting. Oops.
We got ready to go and headed out for the day. Except by the time we got out it was almost noon, so it was more like getting ready for the afternoon. My dad went to his apartment to read cases, so we took a cab with my mother to Ben Yehuda and did some shopping. Tzvi went into Ann saying that he wasn’t spending a lot of money and only needed one kippah. Then he came out with 5. Then the girls found a toy store and Hallie wanted to buy everything but she ended up with a Barbie notebook and pen.
Around 1:30 we started looking for lunch and finally sat down and settled at Coffee Bean. We were ready to order when the server told us the kitchen was closed, which was crazy because five minutes earlier when we were standing at the entrance and asked to see a menu they didn’t say ‘sure, here’s a menu but the kitchen is closed/will be closed in five minutes.’ It was just too difficult, so we split up for lunch. Hallie and Tzvi went to Burgers Bar. Once again it was filled with police, but they got a table. Hallie had chicken nuggets and Tzvi had a lamb burger, which he said was delicious. Madeleine and I went to Mr. Green. I got a salad and Madeleine got pasta, and we both got these great reusable bags that would become our pool bags for the rest of the trip. Madeleine spilled my olive oil all over the table, so that was gross. Anyway, we all had decent lunches.
Madeleine napped in the stroller and I got a coffee bean mocha slushy which was delicious. By the way, when we went back to Coffee Bean for coffee it looked like plenty of people were sitting and eating and getting fresh food, so I guess the kitchen was only closed for the ten minutes that we wanted to order?
We walked around and then split up again. Hallie and I took a cab back to the First Station (across from our hotel) and Tzvi walked a sleeping Madeleine back in the stroller.
At the First Station we met Hadas who was also on sheirut leumi when Ofek was here, so she was at our house a lot. It was so nice to see her and Hallie had a great time with her. We spent maybe an hour and a half together. We also went on the carousel and Ferris Wheel there which was fun. Tzvi went to Gaya, the store that sells all of the wood toys and discovered that they also have little metal puzzle toys. They had a deal if you bought three, so Tzvi bought a level 1, a level 3 and a level 5 (out of 7).
When we were done we went back to the hotel and quickly changed for dinner. Dinner tonight was at Palomino. They had a really cute chair for Madeleine that she stayed in a lot more than regular high chairs. The food was… interesting. Hallie got a pizza that she didn’t like so she just ate a plain piece of matzoh and watched her tablet. As we were sitting we saw a salad go by that looked really good so we ordered it. Except we didn’t order the right thing. Instead we ordered some kind of beet and arugula salad that just ended up being a bowl of arugula. For the main, I got a “tuna bolognese” pasta, which was basically pasta with tomato sauce and tuna, though it actually tasted a little like meat and not too fishy. It was fine while eating it was also kind of nauseating. Tzvi got a pasta with a mushroom cream sauce, which he actually liked. We also all shared a bunch of appetizers which were just okay. Strangely the pizza here was basically just regular thin matzoh pizza, rather than the thicker pesach pizza you find everywhere else.
They didn’t have any desserts we wanted, so we all headed back to the hotel and decided to have dessert in the lobby. My parents got a cab fairly quickly but it took us forever and the Gett app wasn’t working. We finally hailed a cab and boy was our driver interesting. Hallie started singing Vehi Sheamda and the cab driver joined in, and Hallie thought it was the funniest thing.
We got to the lobby restaurant and ordered everything on the menu – strawberries and cream (good cream and fresh tasting strawberries), crème brulee (which was way too runny), tiramusi (eh), and chocolate souffle, except the chocolate souffle was actually more like a chocolate soup. It was like they took batter, baked it for five minutes, and served it. I’m not complaining. It was delicious. But strange. They had no decaf coffee and the server started telling me how decaf coffee isn’t KFP and I was just like ‘what are you talking about they serve it downstairs…’
We sent Avery and Gabs off to the airport because we had enogh of them. Kidding! They had to go home tonight so they could go back to school. Womp womp. Then we headed upstairs and did bedtime. Once again the children went to bed after 10pm. Probably didn’t fall asleep until 11. I don’t know why we cant figure this out.
Nice day.