Days 1 and 2. April 5-6, 2017.  two days in 30 hours.

Wednesday and Thursday only lasted for a combined 30 hours or so, but it felt like a full two days.

 We woke up Wednesday and pretty quickly went into a mad scramble to finish getting ready.  Dominick the driver was supposed to show up at my parents’ house at 9 and at our house around 915, but, chickety-chick, what do you know, at 850, there was a car in our driveway.  It was Pete, one of Dominick’s drivers, and he had the order mixed up, so he headed to my parents and we went into super panic trying to finish up.

 We fed Hallie breakfast and finished up, and at 915, Pete was back with my parents.  They were all amazed as we brought out suitcase after suitcase.  I really don’t know how he fit everything, but somehow he did.  Between the three of us, we had four suitcases, Hallie’s tiny carry-on suitcase, my duffle bag, my purse, the diaper bag, Tzvi’s backpack and Tzvi’s camera bag.  Also, we had the stroller and the car seat.

 We got to the airport and were taken to pre-check in almost immediately, where a guy who looked like Nick from the Bachelor asked us a bunch of questions, like who packed your bags (we did), did anyone give you anything (no), how did you get to the airport (Pete).  Then we checked in, and thankfully all of our luggage was underweight. Except we did pay 200 in extra bag fees.  Next we went through security, which took forever, because there was a huge backup of bags that needed to be checked after going through the xray machine, including three of ours.  It’ll be sad when we don’t get to bring in whole water bottles for Hallie anymore.

 By the time we got through security, we had just enough time to get a quick coffee and then board the plane.  We had seats in the second and third row of economy, which is actually economy plus.  It was great having those seats, because regular el al economy is practically unbearable, though I think the legroom in economy plus is probably just slightly less than what you get on jet blue.  My parents were sitting in the row ahead of us, and just after we sat down, a couple came to take the row in front of them.  The woman was wearing a sheitl and had another sheitl with her that she was carrying on a styrofoam manikin head.  Tzvi asked if it needed its own seat.  Then the woman proceeded to take off her fur coat and hang  it on the back of her seat, which of course covered my father’s tv and tray table.  I think all four of us in unison started asking her what she was doing, and she just looked at us and said “what am I supposed to do with it?”  It’s possible she’s never been on a plane before.

I wont go into too many painful details of the flight, except to say it was basically 10 hours stuck in a tiny space and I think it drove Hallie nuts.  She slept maybe 2 hours total (not enough) and ate and played and walked around as much as she could, but the aisles are so narrow and there’s so many people that there just wasn’t room for her to move around enough.  By the end of the flight she’d had enough and basically spent the last 30 minutes crying during any time that she wasn’t given puffs to eat.

I guess I should also mention the food, or how awful it was.  After our noon takeoff they served lunch.  I got the sweet and sour chicken and Tzvi got penne with meatballs.  Both were pretty bad.  The best thing was Hallie’s chicken schnitzel.  Then, six hours later they served breakfast – a cheese omelet that just had some weird melted cheese around the edges and yogurts.  Not great.

I should also mention that my mother spent the entire flight talking to (or being talked at by) the woman next to her.  Her name was Sima, or something like that.  She told my mother her entire life story, including how her brother fell asleep in the army so he got sent to jail and came out schitzophrenic after three weeks.  Of course the woman spoke no English and they had this whole conversation in Hebrew, so who knows what she was really saying.  So mama is making friends, and pop pop is just seeing everyone he knows.  He ran into an old math teacher getting on the plane, and saw someone else at customs.  Who will we see next?

As we landed, Hallie continued to cry.  When we hit the ground everyone started clapping, including Hallie who suddenly stopped crying, clapped a little, then went back to crying.  We got off the plane, went through passport control (they asked Tzvi a lot of questions – it’s probably the beard), got our bags, and then met our driver Daniel.  My mother had arranged transportation through Avner, who we’ve used many times, so when we met Daniel, my mother asked in Hebrew if he knows Avner, except she said “yodeah” which means know in the biblical sense.

Of course Daniel didn’t really have a large enough van, but once again the stuff all fit somehow.  Hallie fell asleep somewhere before passport control, and continued sleeping for the next 2-3 hours.  We went straight to our first hotel, the King David in Jerusalem, and checked in.  The rooms weren’t ready, so we cleaned ourselves up, left our luggage, and walked over to Mamilla where we had breakfast at Roladin.  It was so great to be back.  We sat outside, and it’s just such a surreal experience that only hours earlier we were stuck with 36 inches of seat pitch, and now we were sitting outside at a café, drinking coffee and looking out at the beautiful scenery of the hills of Jerusalem. 

We started with coffee.  I had a cappuccino and Tzvi had a slushy coffee, which was really good.  For breakfast, Tzvi got shakshuka with onions, mushrooms, eggplant and Bulgarian cheese.  I had the Roladin breakfast, which came with plain shakshuka, a basket of delicious breads and pastries, and a bunch of small sides (cheeses, tuna, tahini, avocado dip, and a large bowl of what we were pretty sure was cream cheese).  Everything was delicious and the portions are so big – Tzvi’s shakshuka came with basically a whole loaf of bread and a good sized salad.  Hallie woke up just as the food arrived, so she sat in the restaurant in her pajamas and had breakfast.  She had some bread and some of the shakshuka sauce, but wouldn’t really eat much else, until we started feeding her the cream cheese, which she loved and ate the entire bowl.  We were dying of laughter, partly because we were overtired, but partly because we thought she was just eating a bowl of cream cheese.  Turns out it wasn’t cream cheese, it was labneh, which is a type of yogurt.  At one point our waitress was telling us that she wants to visit America and has family in NY and Chicago, to which my mother told her “it’s a nice city but there’s a lot of killing.”  I think she was slightly taken aback, and then asked if it was terrorism, but my mother assured her it was just “American on American crime.”

Since we were all screwed up in time zones and meals (I think we skipped dinner and had two breakfasts), we decided to order dessert.  Also because it looked so good.  Tzvi wanted the mille feuille, which is basically a napoleon – puff pastry with pastry cream.  This one came on a beautifully decorated plate with gold coated coffee beans, caramel iced cream and beautifully decorated jellies.  Really really good.

At some point during lunch Hallie pooped, but the bathrooms in the restaurant were too small to change her, so Tzvi and my mother changed her on a bench outside the restaurant.  They also changed her out of her pajamas and into normal clothes.  We walked up and down Mamilla, including Hallie, who was basically running everywhere and just wanted to walk by herself. 

We then went to a mini market to pick up some stuff for the hotel, even though the hotel is kosher for pesach already and you aren't supposed to bring chametz in. Oh well. Then we walked to Perfunique which is a make-your-own-perfume place. This was great. My mom had done it last trip so she wanted me to do it. I sat down and the guy started asking me all these questions like what cuisine I like, what I do to relax, what I would do on a day off from work, where I would vacation, what do I like about the beach, what flowers I like etc. Then he took all my answers and gave me a bunch of scents to choose from. My final scent had six elemens, including black pepper which he said was very modern. Al this time we're learning about how he does the scents for the king David and Waldorf, how he's moved locations, and how he wants to open in Brooklyn. At one point my mom, in Hebrew, tried to ask if he has air conditioning but instead asked if he had weather. We all had a good laugh. I left with my perfume and he said to refrigerate it overnight. He also gave a free travel size. He keeps all of your records on his computer. Great experience.

After that we went back to the hotel and got our rooms.  Tzvi crashed while I unpacked, then Hallie fell asleep and we took showers, except they only gave us one big towel so Tzvi had to use a hand towel. They do have a great towel warmer though.  Hallie woke up after 20 minutes so Tzvi put her in the stroller and walked her around the hotel.  Tzvi and Hallie walked around the pool and then played a little on the grass and in the playground by the pool, and then Hallie ended up falling asleep and Tzvi sat by the pool.  All of this while I napped in the room.  Around 530 we all left for dinner.  As we made the 20 minute walk down to Emek Refaim, I thought about how it’s so amazing that we live in NY and we have this place that’s 6000 miles away on the other side of the world that we’re just so familiar with – we know all the streets and stores and restaurants and how to get everywhere.  At one point today someone asked my father for directions and he was able to give them.  I don’t think most people have a place that they visit so often that they give tourists directions.  I think it’s pretty cool.  My father said that’s why they say Israel is your home.

We walked to Emek and had dinner at Waffle Factory.  I had a salad with tuna, green beans, egg, sweet potato chips and avocado.  Tzvi had a salad with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sweet potato chips, feta cheese and fried goat cheese. All was delicious.  I just don’t understand why restaurants in NY cant make dairy food this good.  Maybe it’s because the ingredients are so much better and fresher here.  Hallie had a little bit of everyone’s food and was very cute.  She pooped again during dinner so Tzvi and my father took her to the bathroom to change her – they don’t seem too big on changing tables here so they had to do it on the floor.  For dessert we shared a waffle] and Tzvi fell asleep with his head on the table. On the waffle we got chocolate and vanilla crème, kinder, Tim tam, lotus cookies, lotus spread and hazelnut nougat. It came with vanilla ice cream. Delicious. Hallie thought so too.

After dinner we walked back to the hotel – it had gotten a bit chilly and windy, but not too bad.  We got back, gave Hallie a bath, set up her bed, which is in our room (which means we have to be silent after she goes to sleep), and then plugged in the noise machine which was supposed to help block out noise for her, except it started smoking (I guess power conversion issues?), so that was the end of that.  We put Hallie to bed, turned out the lights, and now here we are.