Day 31 – Planning the trip to Israel

In the morning I spent some time finalizing the travel plans in Israel.

There are some country specific quirks. We are planning to stay the night of July 11 (Friday to Saturday) around Safed and I’ve tried to make reservations at Beit Yosef B&B. They don’t respond to emails. When I called and they said, “No problem, but since it is Sabbath, and we won’t be able to check you out on Saturday morning, you will have to charge you for two days.” Later I noticed that many sites have similar weekend arrangement with a mandatory weekend stay.. and sometimes the weekend starts on Thursday.

Some guesthouses turn off Internet on Fridays possibly not to invoke the wrath of god as it is concentrating on running electrons everywhere else in the universe.

Many websites offer special rates for tourists: “Show us your passport (ye dumb tourists) and we will give you a better rate.” Yeah, right.

Car rental has issues too. One company, Tamir, has a nice interface allowing different pick up and drop off points so I’ve made a reservation. They’ve sent me an email indicating that they do not allow that. I said that what they are doing is false advertising. They sent an email with a word “Sorry” and a smilie. This is what they mean by “service with a smile” :).

Once you complete reservation with Avis Israel, pick up/drop off points become Ben Gurion Airport. Their email support person sends semi-automated emails of the sort “Sorry, please go back to the website, rebook, and then cancel.” We finally went with Budget. Their office is closed on Saturday so we will have to keep the car 1 extra day but the price is reasonable and I don’t want to experiment with any more options.

To wrap up this long tirade with a nice ending, Scotts Guest House (http://www.scotsguesthouse.com/) in Jerusalem where our trip begins and Kikar Dizengoff Apartments in Tel Aviv (http://www.hotel-apt.com/) where it ends were fast, clear, and so far great to work with.

To completely finish this off, after I finished the reservation in Sefad and was discussing the trip with Dan we realized that most of the stuff in this highly religious town would probably be closed starting on Thursday based on how they define the weekend. So we decided to go to Tel Aviv on Friday and take a day trip to Safed & Acco on Monday.

Georgia re-started the kindergarten with less crying than before. On the way there she was sullen but kept up the conversation. Once we got there she started to cry but then the kids sang a song for her and she stopped crying and joined in. Cooks served muffins (among other things) for breakfast on Monday, which definitely lightened things up. I forgot to mention easier that on weekend when Dan and I said anything that contained the root of the word “sad” as of the root of the Russian word kindergarten (like po-sad-ka, za-sad-a, sad-istic), Georgia picked that root in the conversation.

We met up with Dan and went looking for a place to eat. We first settled in the coffee shop on the corner near the main post office. But when we went to the bathroom with Georgia and saw the desolation we decided to seek better places.

Next, we went to Transylvania, the Romanian place. Len and Susan ate there and it has good reviews. Unfortunately (lunch?) waitresses don’t know English and Russian and don’t respond to the body language. We also don’t know how to say “menu” in Lithuanian so we tried multiple varieties “ménu,” “menú,” “meeee-nuuuuu” (the Estonian variety). One of them was saying something but we had no idea what that could have been. Possibly asking about our blood type.

So we went home and made cold borsch and got wrapped cheeseburgers. I was wondering how they taste. They look like a real thing and it is interesting to see them sold as this one package. Well, the bun and cheese are like a real thing and the meat is not ground but more like a thin-cut shaped like a circle. The taste is between sardine and something else, not sure what. I originally said the floor cleaning cloth but I've never tasted so I could be wrong. In either case goes OK with ketchup.

In the evening we went to Alicia. On the way Georgia said what when she grows up she will go to work and I will go to the kindergarten. Probably true.

She was waiting to see Aquilla but she was with her girlfriends. The weather channel said it will rain at night. I figured that was just a suggestion but turns out they meant it. That run back was like a cardio and wet yoga combined.

Georgia did not get wet but we rubbed her all over with eucalyptus cream, put her in socks and pajamas, and sat her down to watch cartoons with warm milk and honey. There are great perks to being a kid.

We’ve made plans to go to Lazutka’s on Wednesday and cook something for them for dinner.