Israel 2023. Chapter 4: Undisclosed Jerusalem "Hotel", Room 330.
We finally pulled up to our next accommodation. I won’t name it – you’ll soon see why.
I can tell you it’s an apartment style “hotel” accommodation in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. We booked it because it was around the corner from my parent’s apartment, where they would be staying with Austin, Rachel and Kira. Of course, Tzvi was against this from the beginning and wanted to stay at the Orient, but he ultimately agreed once he saw how much the Orient would have been for the week. What really swayed him was that three weeks ago when my parents got to Israel, we asked them to check out this place to see if it was suitable. They said it was very nice and even said they thought we would really enjoy it. Tzvi asked if it was disgusting and they said not at all. Ultimately, we said it wouldn’t be a luxury hotel, but it would be fine. Well, it wasn’t fine.
We arrived around 5:30, and apparently the main guy leaves at 5pm, so we got our key from a 90-year-old man in the office. I really don’t know if he works there or what his connection is. We had the “penthouse” apartment in Building C. It took us a while to get all of our stuff from the lobby to the room because the elevator fits 2 people max, or 1 if you have a suitcase. We ended up just sending the elevator down so Tzvi could send the bags up, but as he was loading the 90-year-old man came out and said, “not too much.”
I don’t even know where to start. I think we are just overwhelmed. We got everything upstairs, and just couldn’t do anything because we were so overwhelmed by the fact that we had to stay there.
The room is two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a living room (with a sofa bed open for the girls), a kitchen, and actually a beautiful terrace with a nice view.
As we sat trying to figure out how we were going to stay there, we began to take in the problems.
The sofa bed the kids were supposed to sleep on was kind of broken; one side tilted downward.
They were supposed to give us all new pots and pans in the kitchen, but they didn’t – they were used and gross. My mom ended up buying us paper goods and a pot.
The fridge wasn’t cold, but we were able to turn that down.
The girls’ bathroom didn’t lock, but the bigger issue was that the showerhead was broken and water only came out of one side. It also sprayed out of the top.
It kind of smelled like smoke.
We killed a bug.
And none of that was even the biggest issue. The living room windows have mechanical shades that are inside the window and controlled by a button on the wall. Even closed, these are not blackout shades. Unfortunately, one of them didn’t even close. We asked the 90-year-old man to come fix them, which he couldn’t, so he brought a tablecloth and hung it over the door outside. I kid you not.
Inbar says this is worse than the army. If she doesn’t stay with us another year, she will tell us it is because we took her to her home country and tortured her. I think if you were a teenager and came here on a school trip you’d say (maybe) this was okay. Luckily the girls were pretty unphased. Hallie enjoyed the space, and Madeleine was super cute unpacking all of her snacks and putting them away on the shelves in the kitchen.
In fairness to the “hotel” it was at least clean, it just wasn’t very nice or well preserved. There just wasn’t a single spot that wasn’t cracked, or stained, or torn.
We were pretty paralyzed, but eventually we got it together, got dressed and got out for dinner.
We had a 6pm reservation at Mitzle, which is a street food restaurant by well-known Israeli chef Avi Levy. They sent us an email confirmation earlier in the day and we clicked to confirm that we’d be there. As the day went on we realized we wouldn’t be on time so we tried to call, but there was no answer. We finally make it out of the “hotel” and got there around 7:30. Well, you might have thought that after everything we had been through in this nightmarish day that we might get one tiny spark of luck and one tiny bit of happiness – a nice, relaxing, tasty meal at a great restaurant. Obviously that was asking for too much. We walked up to find the restaurant was closed. Like totally closed for Pesach. So why did we get a confirmation email?
We started walking down Yaffo looking for food, but there was nothing. A lot of the restaurants that are usually open Pesach ended up closing this year because there were so few weekdays of chol hamoed, so it just wasn’t worth it to open. We finally made it to Ben Yehuda, where our only options were to wait on the ridiculously long line for shawarma, or McDonalds.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten at McDonalds on Ben Yehuda, but it only seemed fitting that a crappy day should end with a crappy meal. You had to order from a screen, but of course only 3/6 screens were working. Also, it was hot and there was no air. Thankfully we found a table outside, where Tzvi sat with the girls waiting for our food… for 40 minutes. The place was crazy busy and I think there were like three teenagers working at the slowest pace possible. All I’ll say about the food is that the fries were okay.
We got back to the “hotel” and tried to get the kids ready for bed. Madeleine was scared of the shower. Tzvi was scared of the bed. Who knows how everyone is going to sleep. We went to sleep telling ourselves that tomorrow will be another day.
Not too long later Hallie woke us up at 630am, probably because the light in the living room woke her up. We got up slowly. I made a little outdoor breakfast. I thought it was very nice. A breakfast with a view of Jerusalem. Then a bird came and stole a piece of matzah.
We were supposed to leave for the day at 1030. Guess who wasn’t ready at 1030? My mother didn’t show up until 11 o’clock, and we were so annoyed because all we wanted was a cup of coffee but there was nothing right around our “hotel” and we didn’t want to walk too far because we didn’t want to be late for them. I continuously ask myself why I stress out to be on time, when time and time again I am let down. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 300 times, well you know how it goes.
We got on the bus and headed to Rishon Letzion, which is Inbar’s home town. Our driver today was Igor, but a different Igor from our trip up North. The drive took about an hour and our first stop was the Yaakov Agam Museum. We were supposed to do a family tour at 12pm, but we were late, but also it was in Hebrew, so I don’t know how that was supposed to work anyway. Once we got in we saw the main exhibit, which is basically one big room with a lot of Agam works. My dad asked, “Where is the rest of the museum?” We walked around listening to an audio tour that you could download on an app, while the kids stood playing on some screen you could poke. Finally there was a kids activity downstairs where you drew and colored. It was cute.
After that we got back in the cab and headed to the mall for lunch. Rachel and Austin had spilled Kira’s formula so unfortunately they had to go back to Jerusalem, so it was sad not to have them with us the rest of the day. At the mall we had a nice lunch at Café Café, and then walked around and shopped a little. We got the girls some stuff from a nice store called Delta, which had a ton of Disney and LOL and Barbie stuff. Also, Tzvi bought Israeli underwear there. After that we tried to call the driver to pick us up, but my mother couldn’t find the phone number. Finally she found it and called Igor, but it was the wrong Igor. Eventually we got the right Igor and we were on our way.
We drove to Inbar’s father’s apartment, where she’s lived since she was a teenager. We met her father again and his girlfriend and saw Inbar’s room. It was very nice. Then we drove back to Jerusalem.
Tzvi had spent most of the day quietly sulking, until lunch time when he basically exploded. I think my father asked him if everything was okay and he just couldn’t contain himself and went off on everything wrong with the “hotel.” So my mother called the “hotel” and spoke to someone who said, “don’t worry, everything will be fixed.” We got back around 5pm eager to see what they had done. Our thought was, it couldn’t be any worse, and maybe it would be better.
It wasn’t better. In the morning the man had said he couldn’t actually fix the blinds, but that he was going to “make it better.” Well, “making it better” was hanging a second tablecloth outside, which had half blown away by the time we got back. Also, they had closed the broken sofa bed and instead had made up the other sofa as a single bed, and Inbar’s room now smelled like smoke. Like awful. We opened the window but it didn’t help. So we went from being able to sleep 5 to being able to sleep 3.
Oh, and the kitchen counter was covered in ants.
That was basically the final straw. We called the man from the “hotel” – there was no one in the office but we managed to get the main guy and the 90 year old man on the phone – and asked if they had another room. They said they’d check and get back to us. Meanwhile, we started packing. Finally they called back and the 90 year old man said, “If we give you another room, then we will be finished with you?” I think he went to the Setai school of hotel management.
The girls and Inbar went with my parents and Austin and Rachel to get dinner on Emek while we went to see the other available room. It was slightly nicer, but the lights were flickering and the bathroom was missing a shower head. Nope. We were done.
Time to go.
