Israel - Pesach 2025. The First Plague. Loneliness.
And now we tell the story of Passover. Not the story of Passover, but the story of the Kaplan family Passover. It was a great trip, it really was. But like every journey, there were ups and downs, plagues and redemptions. And now, the ten plagues of the Kaplan family Pesach trip to Israel:
Loneliness
Insomnia
Shrink Wrapped Food
Rockets
Peanuts
Rhinovirus
House Music
Cramping
Bacterial Infection
Stomach Virus
In reality, the journey started weeks ago when we booked our Israel flights. With Pesach starting Saturday night, we would need to get to Israel by Thursday, and then since it was much cheaper to go a couple of days earlier, we decided to fly Tuesday night.
Then Tzvi made partner—yay! It was great news, except we found out that annual partner summit and the new partner orientation would be taking place the week before Pesach, Monday through Thursday. It really wouldn't look good from him to miss that, so he decided to switch his flight and take the Thursday night flight leaving at 5:30pm and getting in Friday morning. Unfortunately for Tzvi, the only seat left on the Thursday 5:30 p.m. flight was a business class seat. So, poor Tzvi will be flying in business by himself.
As you can imagine, the days before the trip were chaotic. Tzvi had his partner ‘retreat’, so he wasn’t even home to help out. The packing was crazy, we had a flood in the basement, and Madeleine was sick. I’ve blocked it out, but it was just an insane couple of days.
Okay, let’s get to the day of the flight—Tuesday morning. Tzvi went off to work, we said our goodbyes, the kids went to school, and I did last-minute errands and packing. It always feels like there’s more to do when you’re not leaving for the airport until nine o’clock at night. But everything was fine. I got everything packed, and our car arrived at 9:00pm. I felt like—even though I was so tense and stressed about the whole situation—actually getting out wasn’t stressful for some reason. I was texting Tzvi, asking him, like, “What am I forgetting to stress about?”
Anyway, we get in the car, and Hadar starts imitating what Tzvi would be like if he were with us (loyal readers will know he doesn’t travel well). Then she did me and was more calm. It was like: “If we forget something, we’ll just buy it.” Which is exactly when it occurred to me that I forgot Hallie’s headphones in her room. They were on her knapsack, but Hallie brought her knapsack down—not me. So, I didn’t go in and do a last check. But you know what? I just said, “Okay, we’ll buy at the airport for twice the price.” So it was fine. We were calm.
We got to the airport and unloaded. I immediately got a porter and paid him a whole bunch of money to take our luggage, like, 30 feet. Then we started the check-in process. We had our little security briefing, then we had to do the luggage tags, and then go weigh the luggage and drop it off—so it’s like three different stops, which is particularly annoying. But the porter actually took all of our bags and put them on the scale for us. Hadar’s bags were totally overweight—but they let them through somehow. And I mean really overweight, not just a pound or two. Like five pounds. Then I asked, “Where’s the precheck line?” I knew it was all the way down, but the woman saw that Hadar didn’t have precheck, so she gave it to her. We thought, “Great, we all have precheck!” Except… when we got to security, they told us precheck was closed. A woman had pity on us—saw that we had kids—and said, “Go to the business line. Tell them I sent you.” When we got to the business line, they were like, “No, there’s a family/stroller line.” And I did not want to get on that line. I don’t remember where we were going once before, but we’d gotten on that line and it was so long. So I said, “No—they told us to go to the business line.” We got on the business line, and it still took us like 20 minutes to get through, but it was definitely shorter than the regular line. Security was a mess, as always in this terminal. Then we headed toward the gate.
From there, we did our regular shopping. I found headphones for Hallie—for $50. Then we used the bathroom, and it was already time to board. We heard them calling our name: “Kaplan, come to the counter.” But at the same time, they were calling people with children and strollers to board. There was a line for the counter, and I was like, “Screw this, I’m not waiting.” If there’s a problem with boarding, they’ll figure it out. We go to scan our tickets, and they’re like, “Oh, you can’t board. Wait over here.” So we waited. Then this El Al woman comes over and says, “Can you describe your luggage?” I told her, and she showed me a picture and asked, “Is this it?” I said yes, and she said, “Okay, you’re good to go.” So weird. If anyone knows why that is let me know!
Hadar wasn’t with us at that point because she had to pee. So I was carrying all the bags—it was so crazy—but kind of funny. I was hot and overwhelmed, but not really stressed. I was like, “Whatever, we’ll get on the plane. We’re holding a bunch of bags. It’s fine.”
We got on the plane and—lo and behold—there was a lovely little baby, probably 8 or 9 months old, right in front of us. Hallie was like, “Ugh, no, this is horrible.”
I was like, “Don’t worry, the baby’s not going to cry that much. I mean, yeah, it’ll cry a little, but not that much.”
Famous last words.
We got ready to go. El Al, being who they are, pushes back while people are still standing. Love that about them.
The flight time was going to be 9 hours and 30 minutes. They brought dinner—Madeleine ate because she got chicken nuggets with rice and corn. Hallie didn’t want any. But for breakfast? Hallie loved it. She was like, “This is the best bagel and cream cheese.” And I was like, “That’s a frozen bagel and Philadelphia cream cheese.” Glad she enjoyed.
The baby cried for at least the first hour and a half—like, full-on screaming. It was in its car seat, and every time the mom took it out, it would stop crying. But once it was back in, it just cried. Eventually, it fell asleep. Then, over the next few hours, it would let out random screams and go back to sleep. I was so nervous it would wake the girls. They did sleep a bit—actually several hours on me—which was super uncomfortable, but I was thankful they slept. By the end of the flight, the baby started crying again (of course, back in the car seat). But overall, it was a pretty good flight.
We landed—and when you land, you have to wait forever for the stroller. They messed up and brought the strollers from a different flight first, so it took even longer. Then, we had to scan our passports at these machines to get a little visa slip—but it didn’t work. So we had to find a woman to do it manually. We waited, we got the visa. Then, we’re walking down the ramp, and I see a huge line labeled “Foreign Passports.” Another one says “Israeli Passports.” So I get in the foreign passport line because it doesn’t say anything else. It’s the longest line I’ve ever seen here. Eventually, someone says, “Hey, families with kids and strollers, come to this line.” So we switch to a shorter line. We get up to the guy, and he’s like, “Oh, you have green visas? You didn’t need to wait in this line.” I was like, “Why did no one tell us that?”
Also worth mentioning: they didn’t scan our passports at the biometric machines because there was some issue with the name on the visa. No idea what that was, but I need to figure it out for next time.
At that point, we’d already split off from Hadar because she was going home and didn’t want to miss her train. If she missed it, she’d have to wait an hour. So I got the luggage, and it was just me and the two girls. I had Hallie pushing the stroller with all our knapsacks and bags, Madeleine pushing my carry-on, and I was pushing three large suitcases—hugging them together so they’d move. It was probably a hilarious sight.
Why didn’t I get a luggage cart you may ask? I didn’t get a cart because I saw our luggage right away and grabbed it. I didn’t want to leave one of the girls alone to get a cart. And if we were all going to go get the cart together, we may as well have just gone to the exit—I knew the driver was waiting right outside. So I schlepped the luggage and met the driver. Dropped all the stuff with him, then took the girls to pee. I was like, “Great, now I’ll get a nice ice café from Aroma.” Got there—and they were out of slushy! So I got an iced coffee. Disappointing.
Anyway, we got in the car, did the drive to Jerusalem, and finally arrived at the apartment—woohoo! For those that don’t know, my parents have two apartments next door to each other (in the same building) in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. We were staying in the second one—a two-bedroom. It’s very nice, except the master bedroom has a tiny bathroom with the worst Israeli shower. I’ve complained about this in many blogs before – for some reason Israelis build showers without a shower pan so the water comes right out of the shower and goes everywhere. It makes no sense.
Anyway, When we got in, they had dinner waiting. I had shawarma. The girls had hamburgers. I unpacked and we just hung out.Good day.
Not looking forward to the night.