Israel. Pesach 2022. Day 11. At Long Last, Bread.
We woke up this morning and thankfully everyone seems fine. We got very excited for our first chametz breakfast!
We went down and found a beautiful spread. Pastries, breads, babkas, pizzas. I wonder how they did it so quickly. They must have been baking all night. Pretty impressive. I forgot to mention that during yuntev Tzvi ran into Haskel Ash, who he went to Valley Torah with. He lives nearby in Arnona and his parents are staying in the hotel. He was back again for breakfast this morning and Tzvi chatted with him a bit.
At 930 I left to get my hair blown out. Then we all got ready for our photoshoot with Eugene, our family photographer in Israel. We booked this photoshoot when we were here in 2019, but it rained on the day of the shoot and we couldn’t reschedule, so Eugene has been holding our deposit for 3 years.
We left the hotel and took a cab to Gan Havradim (the Rose Garden near the Kneset) and met Eugene there. On the way our cab driver pointed to a bearded man standing on a street corner and said, ‘that’s Jonathan Pollard.’ We said, ‘how do you know?’ He said, ‘Because… it’s Jonathan Pollard.’ As we drove by him the driver rolled down his window and yelled “Yonatan!” and he turned and looked at us. Definitely Jonathan Pollard.
The photoshoot was about an hour and a half. Eugene was so great with the girls. He’s also a magician (he was both the photographer and magician at my brothers’ bar mitzvah), so he made balloons and did magic for the girls. At first Madeleine didn’t want to take photos – we had forgotten that it was actually impossible to get her to take a picture with a photographer on the cruise in January – but once he started with the balloon animals she warmed up and did great. Cant wait to see the photos in five to six weeks.
Is it just me or does she look like she’s ready for her Bat Mitzvah???
And when did this one grow up???
When we finished we walked five minutes to Cinema City, where there is Waffle Factory. Waffle Factory used to be on Emek Refaim, but that closed a while ago and I guess moved to Cinema City. Madeleine fell asleep in the stroller, so she slept through lunch which made it very peaceful. I had a tuna salad, Tzvi had some warm mushroom salad, Robyn had mac and cheese, and Hallie had pizza. For dessert (the real reason to go to Waffle Factory) we got two big waffles. Hallie got vanilla cream and lotus spread, m & ms, a kinder egg and Oreos. Tzvi got vanilla cream, chocolate ganache, lotus cookies, Oreos and apples. You might think Oreos and apples don’t go together, but it was delicious.
After lunch we walked around Cinema City for a few minutes. It’s basically a huge round building with a movie theater and a handful of stores and restaurants, but it’s all themed to movies with statues and posters all over, which was cool.
From there we got a cab back to the hotel where we relaxed a bit before deciding to take a walk. Hallie was so tired that she would only go if she was in the stroller, so Madeleine ended up in the carrier on Tzvi’s back. First we walked by Sushi Rachavia and saw Grant eating lunch (just a photo, no actual “hello”).
We walked all the way down Emek Refaim where we got iced coffee at Aroma. They messed up at first and gave us iced chocolate, which actually kind of tasted like a Serendipity frozen hot chocolate. We also made our obligatory stop at the bookstore and got some Hebrew books as well as Hebrew bananagrams, which Madeleine picked out. I think she likes to play with the tiles and recognized the bag. We then walked back, past the hotel and over to the First Station, where we went back to Gaya for the third time so Tzvi could buy some more metal puzzle toys. This time Tzvi bought a level 5 and a level 6, as well as a heart puzzle that’s a level 1 that Hallie really wanted. So we’re coming home with a lot of metal. Madeleine also had fun playing with lots of little metal balls. Thankfully she didn’t break anything.
When we got back to the hotel I realized that I had lost my bracelet that my mother had bought me on a previous trip in Israel, so I walked back and retraced my steps. Thankfully I found it right outside the hotel. When I got back I found Madeleine having fun with the bananagrams – she just liked dumping them on the floor – and it was decided that Robyn would be taking the girls for dinner to the pizza and pasta place at the Tachana while Tzvi and I went out to dinner. I also found that Tzvi and Hallie had opened the level 1 metal heart puzzle, and Tzvi was completely stumped by it.
It took a while, but we finally got the girls out with Robyn. We got dressed and ready for dinner peacefully, and then headed out to Jacko’s Street, a restaurant near Machane Yehuda. We’ve eaten there before, but it’s been a few years. We had a very nice meal. We started with cocktails, which were ok, and then an asado bruschetta, which was pulled beef on pieces of toast, except the toast got very soggy. We also got this dumpling thing, which ended up being more like a wonton soup, and was just okay. We also got a cabbage appetizer of smoked roasted cabbage with some kind of sauce. That was delicious. For mains we shared a mushroom asado risotto (more pulled beef), and a Moroccan salmon that came with an amazing piece of bread. For dessert we ordered a chocolate mousse thing with sea salt and a sesame twill. Then they brought us a lemon mouse bar covered in white chocolate on the house. That was interesting. It was a really nice meal. The place was so lively and fun, and by the end we felt ill from eating too much.
Then we took a cab home to the hotel. Good day.