The Orient
At some point on Tuesday as we were driving up North Tzvi found out that we didn’t have connecting rooms at the Orient. Now, I’m not really sure when I found this out, but I think I knew before Tuesday. Basically, what had happened was that we were supposed to come to Israel for Pesach, except there was a war with Iran so that didn’t happen. So we moved our reservation from Pesach to Sukkot. Apparently, according to our travel agent, five months is basically last minute for Sukkot, so he wasn’t able to get guaranteed connecting rooms. Now, I always remember hearing that nothing is guaranteed but that we expected something to open up. Tzvi didn’t remember hearing anything, so it was a particular surprise to him when he found out on Tuesday that we would definitely not have connecting rooms. That led to a minor tantrum.
Once we got back to Jerusalem on Thursday, Tzvi and I went over to the Orient to check in and, once again, confirmed that we did not have connecting rooms. Great.
We then went for dinner at Waffle Bar before coming back to the hotel with the kids. We unpacked, got settled, and I think the kids went to sleep at around midnight. Then Tzvi had yet another whole meltdown about the fact that our rooms were separated. Apparently, I was not upset enough about the fact that the rooms were separated. In the end, I slept in the room with the girls, Tzvi slept in his own room, and that was our day.
Friday in Jerusalem
I woke up this morning at around 8:00. Hallie was already awake, and Madeleine was still sleeping, although she got up shortly afterward. I went into the other room—Tzvi’s room—and told the girls, “I’ll be back soon.” And, of course, I told Tzvi to go check on them. He said, “Okay, I’m going to go check on them.” He did not actually go check on them. About three minutes later, Hallie came into the room to tell me that Madeleine had fallen off the bed and slammed her back onto the stone floor. So that was great. She was in a lot of pain, but she seems to be okay. First injury of the trip. So, you know. Good start to the day.
Eventually, we all slowly got up, got dressed, and headed down to breakfast. Breakfast at the Orient is great. It is also a complete who’s who of the Jewish community. But the breakfast itself was very good too. Definitely less selection than the hotel up north, but I would say the quality is better. Hallie found a friend from her class, and we kept seeing random people we knew everywhere. So that was nice. It was just really nice to be back at the Orient.
Then we got ourselves ready and headed out to Machane Yehuda. We took a cab, which should have been simple, except the entire city seems to be under construction. Roads are closed everywhere, traffic is insane, and it is basically impossible to get anywhere. So it took us quite a while to actually get to the shuk.
We did the traditional Friday pre-shabbos route. We began at the shuk, obviously starting at the candy store, then bought onion soup mix because every time I come here I wait until the end of the trip, and then they’re always sold out. Then we walked down the Ben Yehuda where we bought kippas and got McDonalds, except the entire operation seemed to be run by two college students, so it took approximately one hour to get and eat two happy meals. Fast food it was not. On Ben Yehuda we kept running into people. Of course we saw Avi Buchman – if we are ever in the same city as Avi Buchman, we run into him, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but it never fails. We also ran into a partner from Tzvi’s firm and they shared stories of staying up until 3 am every night working. Isn’t it wonderful to be a partner at a law firm so you can come to Israel for vacation and spend the entire trip working?
After that we kept walking because we still thought we might find some actual food, except we had spent so long in McDonalds that every other restaurant in Jerusalem had closed in the interim. We walked all the way down to Mamilla where we managed to scrounge up a cheese sandwich for Tzvi and an ice coffee for me from Aroma.
I had picked off all of my nail polish two days ago and had become increasingly desperate for a manicure. I had already spoken to the concierge at the hotel, and he told me that because it was Erev Chag, it was going to be extremely difficult and I probably wasn’t going to find anyone. Then, around 2, while we were at Mamilla, I got a call from the concierge. He had found a woman down the street from the hotel who could do my nails but I needed to get there immediately. So we jumped into a cab and raced back to the hotel. I ran down the street looking for her salon, which was apparently somewhere down an alley off Emek Refaim. Because of all the construction, it was impossible to find. I was on the phone with the concierge trying to figure out where I was supposed to go when suddenly I heard a woman yelling: “Over here! Over here!” So I found her. And I got my manicure. It turns out she only took cash, so I ended up owing her 100 shekels. But thank God I found her. Anyway, after that I went back to the hotel and we got ready for Shabbos.
Shabbos
For anyone familiar with the Orient hotel, the dining room is on the second lower level (which they call Floor -2). The hotel has two sukkahs – one in the lovely patio outside the -2 dining room and one in the plaza outside the lobby. When we got there on Thursday we immediately assessed and determined that the lower level sukkah was more desirable, so we went to the meal reservation desk and made sure we were seated downstairs. Just another benefit of getting to the hotel a day early. I even went back the next day to reconfirm the meals and there was a woman at the desk in front of me who started telling this whole story about how they had missed their flight because her husband couldn’t find his passport. Apparently, he had not thought to look for it until they were supposed to leave for the airport, so they missed their flight and their opportunity to be in the downstairs sukkah. She was furious. Mostly at her husband.
I didn’t mention that on Friday I had gone back to the apartment to shlep some more clothes over and I grabbed snacks as well and shoved it all in an Ikea bag. A friend of the woman who was dealing with her debacle in front of me looks at my bag, seeing the snacks on the top, and says “have you not eaten in a week?” I’m not sure if she was trying to be funny, but it just came out weird and offensive. I’m pretty sure they were from LA, so Rachel, these are your people.
Dinner in the sukkah was lovely. The food was delicious. There were all sorts of meats—osso buco, lamb shoulder, and approximately 4,000 other things that I cannot remember. But everything was very good, the sukkah was beautiful, and it was just a really nice meal. After dinner, Hallie wanted tea so we ended up going to the lobby restaurant and ordering tea there. A lot of other people seemed to be doing the same thing—ordering drinks or food. We sat there for a while as the girls played one of the new card games we had bought earlier in the trip.
Meanwhile, Tzvi was asleep. I think my dad may also have fallen asleep in one of the chairs. You know the saying ‘from strength to strength,’ they go from sleep to sleep.
The next morning, I think my parents went to shul at the hotel for a little while. We got breakfast, hung around, and Tzvi and I went for a little walk. Before we knew it, it was time for lunch. Lunch was also delicious. There were ribs, deli meats, and another enormous selection of things that I cannot possibly remember.
After lunch the kids wanted to go swimming at the indoor pool. We were sitting there peacefully when suddenly this family came in—parents and four kids, two boys and two girls—and they were complete chaos. I don’t really know how else to describe it. I had actually been sleeping, but I woke up because one of the kids was yelling and started splashing us. The parents kept saying, “Stop. Stop it.” But nothing actually stopped. Eventually, Tzvi had enough and said we were leaving. It was one of those situations where you think: Maybe you shouldn’t have had a fourth?
We left the indoor pool and went upstairs to the outdoor pool instead. The kids swam for a while, although it had gotten surprisingly cold outside. It was nice when you were sitting directly in the sun, but otherwise it was really chilly. They still had a good time.
Afterward, we went back upstairs, changed, and walked over to Abby and Mordy’s. Abby and my mother are childhood friends and they live in Baka, They have four kids, and it is very rare that all four of them are actually home at the same time, so this was a particularly nice opportunity to see everybody. We had a really nice visit.
One funny conversation that came up was when we were talking about my previous work with FIDF and some of the things that happened after October 7. There had been so many private efforts to collect supplies for soldiers—boots, pants, helmets, and whatever else people thought the army needed. And there was also a lot of criticism when organizations (like FIDF) weren’t immediately sending every particular item people thought the army needed. Well, one of the boys told us about being in Lebanon and receiving a huge shipment of raincoats that people had donated in these one off situations. They opened the bags and discovered that the raincoats all had reflective strips on them. Which is obviously exactly what you want when you are trying not to be seen at night.
After shabbos, Hadar arrived at the hotel. We had asked her if she wanted to come stay with us for two nights because, once again, we do not have connecting rooms and we do not particularly enjoy sleeping separately. So Hadar came to stay with the girls for two nights. Which was great.
I went to the gym for a little while, and then we got dressed and headed out for dinner at Zuta, which is sort of a cocktail-sushi-bar connected to the restaurant 1868. We started out sitting in the sukkah, but halfway through dinner we were freezing, so we moved inside. I did not pack appropriately for this trip. Somehow it suddenly became freezing in Jerusalem, and we were completely unprepared. Anyway, the food was very good. We got grilled bread, some sort of salmon sushi thing, plum meat dumplings, yellowtail, and a salmon skewer. We also had really good cocktails. For dessert, we had an apple-cherry crumble that was very, very good. So that was nice.
Then we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.
Good day.