Israel. Pesach 2022. Day 8. How Are You Folks?
Today we got up and headed to breakfast, maybe after 9.
Breakfast was the same except without Avery and Gabs, which was sad. Today was the day my parents are taking the kids to the zoo! So we got the kids ready to go and shipped them off with my parents. We didn’t have that much time but we decided to use it wisely. I went to the gym and Tzvi went straight to the pool. They have these daybeds and then a bunch of uncomfortable non-lounge chairs (sort of like an Adirondack chair).
Anyway, we got a daybed with a view of the Old City walls which was pretty nice. Eventually I went to meet him and we sat there for a little while. Around 12 I went down to the lobby to the yuntev meal reservation desk, because my mother told me (three times) that it opened at noon and I needed to be there early to make sure we got a reservation. Well, I went right at noon and they told me that we were all set and there was no need to have come to the desk. [Tzvi: For the record, I told her that she didn’t need to go to that desk, but no one listens to me.]
In the meantime, Grant came and got the daybed next to us and we talked for a while. It was really warm and sunny and we just sat there for a while reading. As we were sitting there Tzvi got a text message from our tour guide from Monday:
“How are you folks? Hope your travels are going well.”
Tzvi’s first inclination was to ignore it, because he wasn’t looking to start a long lasting friendship with this guy. But it was odd that he was just randomly texting us. It took another minute before he sent the next message:
“You should know that I tested positive for covid yesterday afternoon. A bit of a cough and some congestion.”
Wonderful. We spent the rest of the day worrying about what we would do and how all of us were going to fit into my parents’ apartment when we test positive on Tuesday and can’t get on a plane to go home.
Anyway, the kids came back a little after 1pm and hadn’t eaten lunch, so we got them some schnitzel at the restaurant. Then they changed and went swimming. There is a kiddie pool, which is cute and would be great for Madeleine, but it’s not heated and the water is freezing, so she couldn’t go in there. Instead she went in the main pool. The main pool has this really wide shallow ledge that goes the whole length of the pool and is mainly used for women taking Instagram photos of themselves. Madeleine went up on the ledge and started walking on the ledge, but then the lifeguard told us that she wasn’t allowed to walk there. So Tzvi took her to the shallow end and she was going up and down the stairs, but then the lifeguard came over again and said he was nervous because she was jumping on the stairs and he was afraid she would drown. Basically, he didn’t want her in the pool without floaties, and of course we don’t have floaties, so that was that. I told him it was ridiculous and if they didn’t want kids in the big pool they need to heat up the kiddie pool.
Tzvi stayed at the pool a little while longer with Hallie and I took Madeleine for a walk to nap in the stroller. [Tzvi: We swam a bit and then Hallie was done in the pool so she sat huddled underneath a towel watching her tablet.]
I walked for a while, with a goal of finding a slushy iced coffee and Covid tests (I told Robyn about the Covid exposure and she immediately wanted to test). The tests were easy to find, but it was pretty late in the day and things tend to close early on Erev Chag in Jerusalem, so it was tough to find anywhere open and still selling coffee, but eventually I found coffee at Aldo (the ice cream shop) and it was actually quite good. I also went to the market and bought some kitniyot food (humus and some chips) because Pesach would be over Friday night and then we could eat some hardcore kitniyot. Then I walked back to the hotel and gave Tzvi his ice coffee.
Tzvi went back to the pool while I stayed in front of the hotel so the girls could run around and play. Eventually Robyn came back (she had taken the bus from her kibbutz). We’re grateful that she actually returned to us.
Back in the room the kids played with their matzoh pizza slime that we had brought, and we definitely ruined one of the hotel towels.
Eventually Tzvi came back from the pool and we all got ready for yuntev. I should add that Tzvi got extremely burnt at the pool, to the surprise of no one. Tzvi is very much a hypochondriac, and if he finds one strange ache or pain he’s telling everyone he’s worried that he has MS or some rare cancer, but when it comes to the one disease he can actually prevent (skin cancer), he’d rather lay in the sun for hours.
Anyway, yuntev started and we went to the lobby to wait for my father to finish shul. Then we went for dinner in the dining room and had another nice buffet. As usual Tzvi directed everyone through the courses. I’ve gone through the food enough times that I don’t need to do it again.
The whole dinner my dad was looking kind of upset and annoyed. Finally he told us that he wasn’t feeling great and he’s just too old to have a day like this where he has to take the grandkids and walk all over a zoo in the heat. We told him if he wasn’t feeling well he should go take a Covid test, but he didn’t want to take a covid test. So he went back to his room and took a Covid test, and of course, it was positive. Not only was it positive, “it was an immediate positive!” (he later said with glee). Then it came out that he actually hadn’t been feeling great since the day before but just didn’t want to test and need to quarantine, so basically he exposed all of us.
My mom was freaking out at that point and started making phone calls to her travel health insurance and to my father’s doctor and I don’t even know who else. She wanted to try to get him a PCR that night, but I said it didn’t matter because they aren’t leaving for two more weeks and it’s not like there’s actually anything wrong with him.
So around midnight my mother went to the lobby and told the front desk that her husband had broken his sleep apnea machine and she couldn’t sleep through his snoring (which actually was true – he had broken the tubes the previous day). So at midnight my father packed his stuff and moved downstairs to room 203 (directly below my mother’s room 303). When he got there apparently there was a bottle of wine and a cake. I guess they were waiting for him.
I think we finally got to sleep around midnight. How can a single day be so relaxing and stressful at the same time?