Israel Trip: December-January 2014-2015
We drove past Lot's cave and the (supposed) salt statue of Lot's wife and headed southwest into the Negev Desert, where Marcus again was carsick (but this time we were better prepared), over to a camel ranch where Robert and Marcus took an hour-long camel ride out into a desert canyon.
Marcus was very good about leaning backward when the camel knelt down or stood up (an essential trick they mentioned at the little camel orientation). Samantha was about to ride a camel with me when one of the other camels made a sound, and it was all over. "Oh how nice," I said, trying one last desperate marketing ploy, "the camel is mooing like a cow!" She saw through me immediately. "No," she said, "it's roaring like a lion." She played in the sand while they rode, and all was well.
We drove just a bit further on to Beer Sheba, where we had a nice "business lunch" (yes, our dinner was so unfashionably early, at 5:15, that we were still on the lunch menu) of unlimited salads and breads with some grilled meats and fish. Then we went to another supermarket for more provisions and checked into our hotel, the only one of the trip that I do not recommend, the Aladdin Hotel in Beer Sheba. To say it was awful is an understatement. Nothing that could possibly be right about a hotel was, here: the desk clerk spoke only Russian (and perhaps Hebrew, but clearly he had no English) and seemed unhelpful even in Russian; the "free parking" was a tiny L-shaped lot near a supermarket loading dock (and, as we'd discover in the morning, some plate-glass window businesses with large trucks who boxed our car in); the room had a peculiar red light, exactly three blankets, three pillows, and zero pillow cases; the noise of uninsulated water pipes above and below us sounded like hurricanes around our heads all night; and there was no breakfast, despite the advertising. In the morning I took Marcus to a bakery around the corner to buy some bourekas (mushroom and cheese) and giant truffle/munchkins and croissants, while Robert attempted to get the car out of the lot. Eventually one of the plate-glass window guys backed the car up for us, and we sped out of there, heading north.
This was our last day with the car: we drove first to the Armored Corps Museum at Latrun, where we got to inspect and climb lots of different kinds of tanks parked in a semi-circle outside.
It happened that a current IDF soldier, on leave for a few days, was showing his parents and younger brother around the museum while we were there, and when it became obvious that Marcus was fascinated by the different mechanisms on the tanks and had dozens of questions, he switched his explanations into English and included Marcus in his tour. He'd hop under and around the tanks with ease, explaining how this one rotated in order to open the hatch, where the sergeant stood in that one, what you'd do if someone was getting too close to your tank, etc.
After the soldier and his family headed in another direction, we wandered around for over an hour, especially appreciating the mobile bridge units that had been used on the Suez, and some funny pale blue Lebanese tanks. It was New Year's Eve, but as this is not a big holiday in Israel, nobody particularly remarked on that. It was only when we realized that more and more soldiers kept arriving at the arena next to the museum that we realized something special was going on: apparently December 31st was a handy day for the graduation ceremonies for the end of basic training for the most recent round of IDF recruits, and they were all showing up (lackadaisically, I might add) to rehearse for the 3:00 ceremony. We saw a yellow stunt plane overhead flying back and forth, also rehearsing, and for the rest of the day we kept hearing helicopters arriving, presumably bringing various military dignitaries to the event. Marcus loved the yellow plane, and watched it as long as we could see it.
Just around the corner from the Armored Corps Museum was a gas station/fast food complex, so we went over there for an early lunch, getting more grilled meats and salads and pita. A block or two down the road from there also was Mini Israel, which we had to stop at after our fantastic experience at Miniaturk last year in Istanbul. Mini Israel was huge, and in that way it did not disappoint, but I think the multilingual audioguides at Miniaturk were really useful. Marcus had to fix the train tracks on one exhibit; Samantha appreciated the little people moving around at another; and Robert tried to figure out, given the scale of the miniature, how long it would take to walk around the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem. We had a great time.
We drove straight from Mini Israel to our rented apartment in Tel Aviv, where we unloaded the car and then returned it to an in-town location. Our apartment was the fourth-and-a-halfth floor in a walk-up, so definitely more stairs than our apartment at home, on Hayarkon just one block off the beach, in a nice central location. (It happened that the US Embassy was literally next door.) The apartment had a big living room where the kids slept on futons and daybeds, a nice bedroom for us, a small bathroom and kitchen and entry/office-area, and a huge terrace with more daybeds and chairs and lots of plants, and a view of the beach as well as the skyline. I did laundry in the sink and hung things out to dry on the drying rack on the terrace, and we trotted out to play on the beach and then go to dinner at Falafel Gabay, where we had an excellent falafel sandwich with self-serve pickles and a very good chicken and rice soup with lots of bread. We got a lemonade there (beautifully tart and freshly-squeezed, as all the lemonades in restaurants were--and, compared to the grapefruit lemonade in bottles and hotel juice dispensers, delightfully unbitter) also and a malabi pudding which they doctored up with coconut and jam for Marcus for dessert.
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Created: 1/11/15. Last Modified: 1/11/15.