Israel - Pesach 2025. The Fourth Plague. Rockets.
How did I sleep Thursday night? Definitely better, but I was tossing and turning all night. The girls got up a few times, but at like 5am we finally passed out.
Friday Morning
Friday, we had a reservation at 10:30 at the Grand Cafe, but next thing I knew, it was 10:30 and Hallie was waking me up. So... we weren’t making that reservation. We just got up, ate something in the apartment, and made it in time for our 12 o’clock hair reservation. Except—as I mentioned yesterday, when you make reservations for things in advance here, they don’t really hold. So we get to the hair place and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know… sit, wait.” So we sat and waited.
The hair place is this little shop run by Miki and Sagi—I think Sagi is the woman, Miki is the man. And there are just people sitting on random chairs and couches in this tiny space. It’s pretty disgusting, but also, you can tell these people know everyone.
They took my mom first for her blowout. Then they took Hallie and were like, “Oh, her hair is very dry,” so they had to do a hair mask. Then they took me, and then Madeleine. But while Miki was doing my hair, he was like, “I can’t, I need to cut.” And I was just sitting there like, I don’t know… you’re speaking Hebrew at me… and somehow I let this random Israeli man cut my hair. Which I may regret a little. But it’s okay. I look like an Israeli woman now. We finally got out of there—it took like two hours. When Miki was blowing out Madeleine’s hair, it got too hot and she started crying. It was a whole thing. Then he showed me how her hair is very uneven and also needs to be cut, so cut he did. The entire situation was just… funny in that way that it’s not funny in the moment, but it’s funny when you tell the story later.
So we got our hair done, and by the time we finished, we met up with Mr. Tzvi. Then we basically just packed for a while. Tzvi had wanted to get to the hotel early. I think he thought he would arrive at the apt, we would welcome him with open arms, and be packed and ready to go to the hotel. In reality, we had a lot to organize since we were going to the Orient Hotel for a few days. Eventually, my dad drove us over in a couple of trips.
Of course, there were some issues checking in (because why not?), but it all worked out. The manager remembered me, and I was like yea, because I always have some issue. We got the rooms we requested (a “complex”), so that was good. This is the same room we’ve had in the past – it’s a corner where there are two rooms next to each other, but you can close the hallway door outside the two rooms, so they’re not like connecting rooms but they share a tiny private hallway.
When we walked in the lobby, there was this big beautiful dessert display—chocolate nut bark, truffles, dried fruit. Just gorgeous. We ate something at the dairy restaurant in the hotel lobby, which is kosher for Passover. Hallie got pizza (didn’t really like it), Madeleine got noodles (also didn’t like them). I had a Caesar salad, which I really liked. Tzvi had an eggplant soup that he actually really liked (have you ever heard of eggplant soup before?).
Then we got ready for Shabbat dinner. We were seated at a table near the entrance and right from the start there was typical drama about seating. Hallie and Madeleine both wanted to sit next to me. Tzvi didn’t want to sit on the booth. Hallie wanted to be in the dark seat (where there was less light. She likes romantic lighting). We finally figured it out and then Tzvi and my mother spent the whole meal complaining about the booth and saying we couldn’t have seder at this table. Dinner itself was really nice. It was a good buffet as usual - beef, lamb, chicken, lots of great salads, two kinds of soup – but nothing super exciting to report.
At one point during dinner my mother came back to the table and reported that there was an older Israeli woman in a nightgown wandering around the buffet and putting her hands into the salad bar. She said she could’ve been one of her patients, but no one else seemed to mind. That was the first sighting.
I think one thing we also noticed is that there are a lot more Americans at the Orient than there used to be. When we came a few years ago it was all Israelis and French, and only a couple of American families. Now it seems like the Five Towns has found out about it and taken over. We’ve seen a few people we know. We also saw a partner from Tzvi’s firm, who happened to be wearing the Fried Frank vest from the partner retreat that Tzvi didn’t get. That didn’t make Tzvi happy.
And then came the first experience of them rushing us out. We were sitting, eating—our meals always take a while—and suddenly the staff is like, “We need to clean up, we need to set up for breakfast.” Basically just kicking us out. It was weird.
We headed upstairs and went to bed. Tzvi passed out, of course. I took a bath. They have the best bathtub here, and we have a nice little terrace in our bathroom so you can look outside. It’s serene.
And that was Friday.
Shabbos Day
Shabbos day we woke up, and scrambled to get ready for breakfast. I think it ended at 11 and we got there around 10:30. It was the usual breakfast spread – salads, eggs, quiches, roasted vegetables, pesach pastries.
After breakfast, we went back to the room. The girls hung out in my parents’ room and Tzvi basically slept straight through until lunch at 1:30. Lunch was nice—another solid buffet. We saw the old lady wandering around again, still in the same pink nightshirt. After lunch Tzvi spoke to the maître de and gave very specific instructions about where he wanted to be seated – main room, no booth. We’ll see how that works out.
After lunch, we took a walk over to see our good friends Abby and Mordy, who live near my parents in Baka. I had never met Ronni’s kids before, so it was really sweet. Then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the seder.
Finally it was seder time. First off, Tzvi was very pleased with the table we were given, which was right in the middle of the main seating area. No booth, real chairs. It was a nice table. Tzvi decorated the table with our little plastic squeaky frogs and put out everyone’s hagadahs. It was nice. There’s not much to say about the actual seder. Tzvi ordered an expensive bottle of wine that I thought tasted like the floor of a barn, but he really enjoyed it, so he was happy. We did our usual songs, but it’s always different when you’re in a dining room full of people and noise. Tzvi hid the afikomen behind the register at the front of the dining room, which took the girls some time to find. Like each of the previous meals there are a delicious meat buffet, and the old lady in the same (I guess unwashed?) blue nightshirt was wandering around. At this point Hallie is afraid to go to the bathroom alone because she says the lady is “haunting” her (I think she means stalking).
Of course, once again, they rushed us out. It was like 11 p.m. and the staff was already cleaning up around us, saying they needed to set up for breakfast. We were like, “It’s the seder! What are you doing??” It was honestly kind of ridiculous.
After that, I started getting a cold and, surprise surprise, did not sleep well. I think I’ve just accepted that I’m never sleeping on this trip. That’s just what’s happening now.
Sunday
Sunday morning we got up and went to breakfast. Hadar was going on a walking tour so she left early to go to breakfast first. When we got there later we stood on line and waited but Hallie went in to take a look at the dinning room. When she came back she said, “you’re not going to believe it. Hadar is sitting with the old lady.”
Apparently they had given Hadar her own table, then when she went to get food someone took her table and the waiters told her just to sit at another table, so she did, except then it turned out that was the old lady’s table. So she sat with the lady. And yes, she was still wearing the same blue nightshirt.
After breakfast we went to Gan Ha Pa’amon, a park across the street. They have two playgrounds, one that’s like a kid’s playground and ones that’s like a workout place but all of the kids play on it anyway, and we did that basically until lunch. Then we ate lunch. All we do is eat here. It’s one meal to the next. That’s what you got to do. Although at lunch they didn’t really rush us because they didn’t have to set up for another meal. I don’t know if anyone was doing a second seder. We certainly weren’t.
After lunch we went swimming. The hotel has a great indoor pool as I’ve mentioned before so Hadar and the girls and Tzvi and I swam. After a while Hadar and my mom took the kids upstairs and Tzvi and I and my dad stayed behind the relax and read.
I was there, minding my own business, reading the new Hunger Games book, and then all of a sudden, I don’t even hear anything, I just see people shuffling around and Tzvi is like ”let’s go.” I was like, “where?”
“I think there’s a siren.”
So we get up and head into the bomb shelter which is like some kids’ camp room, which is actually very cute. It was definitely nerve-wracking not to be with the girls and not know what was happening but we all packed in there nobody seemed too nervous. I don’t think they even actually closed the door to the room. We just waited there for like ten minutes until we got the all clear. While I was there I said hello to Chef Bae, an influencer who’s a private celebrity chef. Once we got upstairs we heard that Madeleine was great but Hallie cried. I guess that’s to be expected. Overall we survived and it was a good first siren experience. Thank you to the Houthis for the opportunity.
After that Sunday ended in kind of a blur. After yuntev ended Tzvi got right on his computer and basically disappeared into work for the next several hours. There was a big protest that went through Jerusalem and went by our hotel. I think it’s part of a weekly protest thing. It took us, no joke, an hour and a half to figure out that maybe we should just order room service because, oh right, we were starving.
Room service ended up being surprisingly decent. It came from both the dairy and meat restaurants—some salmon, a fake bread situation, a couple of salads. Nothing incredible, but it hit the spot. Then came sleep... or lack thereof. It was another rough night for me, not much else to say.