Day 11. April 15, 2017.  one day of yomtov.

Shabbos started and Hallie napped while Tzvi went down for davening while I got ready for dinner.

We all met at davening and then went up for dinner in the dining room.  Our table was again in the side dining room and one table over from where we had seder.  We had the same size table, but we were 12 people, so it was a little bit tighter, but still not too bad. Dinner was a buffet, but to start, Tzvi ordered a bottle of red wine (Yatir Har Amasa 2011).  Even though it was a buffet, we still managed to drag the meal out into a 9 course meal (based on the way Tzvi ate it).  Here are Tzvi’s descriptions:

1st course – gefilte fish appetizer course: same old jarred gefilte fish, just okay.

2nd course – other fish appetizer course: they had some interesting stuff.  Seared tuna, a ceviche that I tried and really didn’t like because it had mint, cold roasted sweet potatoes, cold roasted eggplant, and some of cauliflower salad.

3rd course – meat appetizer course:  roast beef, chopped liver with fried onions (I don’t think I can ever eat chopped liver again without fried onions), avocado salad, olives, turkey.

4th course – mushroom soup: very good mushroom soup and not too creamy.

5th course – chicken soup: eh, not great.  Seriously needed salt.

6th course – main course: excellent.  Duck, veal spareribs, entrecote (prime rib), stuffed eggplant, mashed potatoes, and I think other roasted potatoes.

7th course – dessert course: typical pesach desserts.  The best thing was the shot glass with a molten chocolate cake that was just basically a cooked cake top and totally raw molten chocolate inside.

9th course – fruit course: as always, chopped apples and grapefruit.

Dinner took a while.  Hallie did pretty well during the meal, but didn’t sit for too long.  She loved the mushroom soup and ate a little of the food, but by the time Tzvi hit his soup courses she wanted to come out.  We took turns following her around the dining room (me more than Tzvi) and made lots of friends.  First Hallie made friends with some Spanish kids who were singing wheels on the bus.  Later she made friends with some French children from Paris who let Hallie play with their ball.  I think she liked being around the other kids, probably because it reminded her of being back in day care.

At one point during dessert, my mother was holding Hallie and feeding her little bites of the molten chocolate shot glass dessert, while Gabriella’s brother told a story that involved naked wrestling.  We were all totally engrossed in the story, and when he finished we realized that my mother had stopped feeding Hallie, who was holding an empty shot glass and had her hands, arms and face completely covered in chocolate.  We all laughed and then did our best to clean her up.  After that she was pretty hyper and really went running all over the dining room and lobby.  Eventually us and the French family were the last ones in the dining room and they told us we had to leave because they needed to set the tables for breakfast.

We ended up standing in the lobby talking for another hour.  Around 1130 my mother tried to start planning the wedding and picking out the florist, but we had all had it, including the Cohens, so we said goodnight and went upstairs.  At that point Hallie was really going nuts and quite literally bouncing off the walls (she would run down the hall, run into a wall and just get right back up and keep running).  It was probably a combination of having so much sugar and being up way too late.  She was really happy and smiling the whole time, and it was really cute.  We got her back to the room, gave her a quick bath, and then eventually got her to calm down and put her to bed.

We woke up Shabbos morning at 845.  Hallie came into our bed and climbed around and kept taking things off of Tzvi’s night table.  It was cute.  She’s recently discovered her belly, which is also very cute.  Eventually we got up, got dressed, and went down for breakfast.  My father and brothers were sitting outside in the interior courtyard and finishing breakfast, so we took a nearby table, and when they finished Austin and my dad came and joined us.  Same old breakfast, but the cream cheese today tasted like sour cream.

After breakfast we put Hallie in her stroller and took a walk through the next door Liberty Bell Park (which has a replica of the Liberty Bell in it).  Hallie fell asleep and we took her upstairs and tried to rest in bed ourselves.  We sort of lounged around for a while, and then went down for lunch around 130 (all we do here is eat).  Avery had gone to Gabriella’s family for lunch, so it was just the six of us.  Lunch was again a buffet.  I wont go into detail on the food because every meal is basically the same.  Though oddly, there were a bunch of things today that looked the same as certain things from last night, but tasted totally different.  Lunch seemed to drag on for a while and again we were basically the last to leave the dining room.

Around 415 my parents friends, Amy and Steven Inker from Brooklyn, came to visit with their two kids who are studying in Israel for the year.  We sat in the lobby talking, until Hallie needed a diaper change.  We ended up taking her upstairs and putting her down for a nap in her crib, which lasted at least an hour, during which time we also slept.  Good to get a nap in on a Shabbos afternoon.

We woke up twice during Hallie’s nap – once when random children ran by knocking on doors and again when the turndown man came with the nightly chocolates.  We finally got up around 630 and went back to the lobby where my parents were still sitting with the Inkers.  They left shortly after that and we all went back upstairs.  They had a nice visit with them, but I think my father’s starting to lose it from all of this socializing.

Shabbos ended around 740, we got Hallie bathed and dressed, bathed and dressed ourselves, and then around 845 we left to walk to the Mamilla area.  We had dinner at Caffit (which is actually across the street from Mamilla at the bottom of Shlomtzion Ha’Malkah).  The restaurant was full so we had to eat outside.  It was pretty cold but the seating area was enclosed and they had heat lamps.  Dinner was fantastic.  We ordered Hallie a kids pizza that came with French fries, apple juice and iced cream.  Good deal, and the pizza was pretty good for pesach.  I ordered a nicoise salad with a side of roasted sweet potatoes which were delicious.  I really don’t get it – the nicoise salad is so simple, so why cant the dairy restaurants in our neighborhood make food this good.  And they’re all owned by Israelis!  It’s so frustrating.  Tzvi ordered the sweet potato salad that had the same roasted sweet potatoes, and he also loved it.  Oh, and the salads are always massive.  My mother got a fried cauliflower thing that was incredible, and then for dessert we got waffles with whipped cream and ice cream.  If you would’ve told me those were just regular non-pesach waffles I wouldn’t have argued with you.  Hallie had her vanilla ice cream, but she wasn’t crazy about it.  She did great during dinner though, and stayed in her seat almost through the whole meal.

After dinner we walked up to Ben Yehuda and again visited Ann, the kippa store.  We all got kippas, including Avery who bought a white kippa for his wedding that is 13 months away (hey, you never know when you’ll be back in Israel).  After that we walked up to the top of Ben Yehuda.  Me and my parents and Avery took a cab back, but Hallie had fallen asleep and we didn’t want to wake her to get her in a cab, so Tzvi and Austin walked back.  Tzvi got back just a few minutes after us, we put Hallie to bed, and now here we are.