Shabbos

Shabbos morning we woke up and headed to the shul(some of us earlier than others) which is actually a minyan that takes place in a school. After shul we met up with Chani and Moshe Turk and headed to their apartment. We had a great time at their house listening to their kids speaking with their Israeli accents. We really did a lot of catching up and stayed most of the day. We went back to Seth and Lori's about an hour before shabbos was over. Josh headed to mincha/maariv while Lori and I did some more chatting and of course played with Tamar. After shabbos was over we went with Seth and Lori to a resturant in Modiin. This was a whole new challange since they didn't have a menu in English so we took a while to order. We were surprised to see after a few minutes of sounding out long word that they were just english words written in hebrew. We enjoyed our dinner and towards the end of the meal we saw who else but Chani and Moshe coming in with Alan and Alison! We of course took the opportunity to take a picture for the blog:). We then headed back to Seth and Lori's as it was getting late and Sunday is a work/school day.

Erev Shabbos

Friday morning we got up and Josh made it to the kotel for davening with out any detours. We met at breakfast and we enjoyed our last hotel breakfast. We then checked out of the hotel and put our stuff in storage and headed out for one more shopping trip! First we stopped and tried to figure out what Ahava stuff we were supposed to be buying for my mother-in-law. Then we got side tracked at another jewelry store. Then we picked up Rugalach for Lori. Next we headed to Mea Sharim to pick up the kippah we ordered the day before for Jordy. Then we went to Ben Yehudah where we made a stop for Fro-yo. Then we found a store that had table cloths for really cheap. We had some difficulty converting inches to meters but a call to Lori straightened that out. As we were walking around we got a phone call from Moshe Turk, who lives in Modiin, that he was going to be in Yerushalim to pick up his Shabbos guests, Alan and Alison Garfinkle and that he can drive us to Modiin too. This was a big releif since we weren't 100% sure about how we were going to get there. Then we headed to the Larome/Inbal to have a seat in their lounge for a little while to kill time until Moshe picked us up. Then we headed back to the Dan Panaroma to get our luggage and await our ride. Moshe came and we crammed all our luggage into the car. We had a nice ride chatting with Moshe and the Garfinkles about Israel and Moshe's Alyiah experience and his job. We arrived at the Gersons about 15 minutes before shabbos. We were greeted by Dov sharing the very exciting news that Lori is expecting and Lori laughing at me because i had no clue that all the clothing i was bringing for her was maternity! We rushed to get ready for shabbos and then once the men left for shul Lori and i did a little catching up. Tamar showed me around the house and showed me the famous Marpecet where she had previously announced to her whole neighborhood that she "Hates all you hebrew speaking people". When everyone returned from shul we had a delicilous shabbos dinner. It was so great seeing everyone and hearing all their stories! Tamar wowed us with her hebrew knowledge while Elisha and Dov told us about their baseball teams and school. After dessert and Dovs story of his evening with his friends we all headed to bed.

Thanksgiving Dinner

After the zoo we took a bus close to the hotel and then caught a cab for the rest of the way. Then we changed and had some coffee before heading to Vaquireo resturant. We had been told that since we only had one night at a resturant that this was the place to go. For those who aren't familliar with it, it is an all you can eat kind of place, you get a platter of salads and a plate of potatoes and then your waiter brings 10 different main courses to your table to try...let me see if i remember all 10...chicken wing, empanada, stew, sausage, turkey, roast beef, shoulder meat, corned beef...shoot...i can't remember 2. Anyhow, since it was thanksgiving they also had a delicious pumpkin soup which Josh and i thought was the best part of the meal! The food was OK, but we were not overly impressed. We decided that instead of getting dessert at the resturant we would go to the king david and have dessert there...problem was we were fleshig and dessert was michig, so then we tried the larome and then we tried the Plaza and then we gave up and stopped at Supersol and bought crembo and a Pamelo and headed home for the night.

Where the heck is the zoo???

We decided that we should go to the biblical zoo since it is supposed to be right near the mall. We asked a couple of people for directions and got a few diferent directions, so we spent about an hour walking around in circles until we finally figured out that it isn't as cloase as we thought and we took a bus and just made it an hour before they closed...so we rushed through the zoo snapping pictures and trying to see as much as we could in an hour. It was a very cool zoo although we didn't understand what about it was biblical...maybe we just didn't have enought time to see that part???

The Mall

Next we went to the mall...aka Kanyon Malcha. We strolled around until we hit burger king. We split a whopper meal since we werent starving but couldn't pass it up! Then we did a little more shopping...i introduced Josh to the world of Naot and he bought his first pair. It was a good thing too since he was going to be doing a lot of walking soon!

Shopping!

Thursday morning Josh headed to the kotel for daving while i enjoyed a leisurly breakfast(because he was given the wrong bus number and took a detour to Talpiot before getting to the kotel). We then walked to the shuk for some shopping. First i took Josh to Marzipan...he'd never been there before. We got some fresh rugalach.mmmm. Then josh got something fleshig to eat since he missed breakfast. Then we headed through Geulah and i showed Josh where i used to live at Machon Gold, which is now a boys yehiva! Then we stopped at the brooklyn bakery for a black and white cookie(we seriously ate our way through the country). Then we went into Mea Sharim and did a little shopping, mostly gifts for the kids!

Wednesday - The Geldman's

3:30 - 5:30: Back to Y-M - It was another 2 hour ride to Yerushalayim. We basically watched the sun set behind the mountains as we drove. This was another familiar site for me since we often drove back from Tirat Tzvi (during my year in Israel) while the sun was setting.
5:30 - 6:00: Hotel: We spent 1/2 hour getting ready for dinner. Ardie arrived at around 6 and we were off to Efrat.
6:00 - 11:30: Dinner at the Geldman's - As you can see by the amount of time we were at the Geldman's, we had a great time and didn't want to leave. We actually ended up starting dinner a little later than expected since we were waiting for Yaffa and Loli to get back from shopping. This was actually good for us, since we were just finishing digesting everything we ate for lunch and were getting hungry again. Dinner was excellent(thanks Ivonne!). We ate well and had a very spirited discussion regarding the dis-engagement for the Gaza Strip. One of the main things (in my opinion, at least) that differentiates American teenagers from Israeli teenagers is their interest in politics. While the dis-engagement might be a unique topic that touches Jews around the world, you can definitely see and hear the passion in their voices as they expressed their opinions. Before we knew it, it was 11:30. We said our good-byes (took a picture) and Ardie drove us back to the hotel. Thanks to the Geldman's for having (and driving) us. Good luck to Avi in his quest to get into the Army!
11-30: We go,t too tteehe hhoowtdwel.,,ananndd...lzz zzzz.zzzzzzz....zzzzzzzzzzz...zzzzzzzzz

Wednesday - To The North - Part 2

12:00 - 1:30: Lunch - We drove into the city and started to look for a Kosher restaurant. Unfortunately we didn't take a picture of the spread, but we found a kosher fleishig restaurant and they gave us a ton of food. It was good.
1:30 - 2:00: Rambam's Kever - Our next stop was the kever of the Rambam (The kvarim of the Shl'a, R' Yochanan Ben Zakai were also there). The Rambam wanted to be buried in Tevaria b/c that is where the first Sanhedrin that precedes the 3rd Beis Hamikdash will meet. We had no idea those graves were in Tevaria, and it was a very inspiring to be there.
2:00 - 3:30: The last 2 places we visited (I can't remember the names of the places right now) were pretty interesting. One was the place where some treaty was signed and another was a new cultural center that was donated by a mother in memory of her son. Unfortuantely I don't remember the details of each, but I'll write them in once I do. (see what happens when you wait 3 weeks to update your blog!!??!?)

We had to get back to Yerushalayim since Ardie Geldman was picking us up to eat dinner at his house in Efrat. Since it was a 2 hour drive, we started to head back to the hotel.

Wednesday - To The North - Part 1

6:30 - 7:30: Wake up. I went the French/German/Sfardi minyan that he found while Arica got ready.
7:30 - 8:00: Breakfast at the Dan...our tour guide, Daniel Rosenblum, met us around 7:50 in the breakfast room. We talked about what we were going to do that day. Our original plan was just to go to Tirat Tzvi and visit some people that I knew there. After that we figured we would let the tour guide take us around and show us any sites, historical or otherwise, since he is a professional tour guide. With that, we finished off breakfast and we were off.
8:00 - 10:00: The Road North - We headed out of Yerushalayim in Daniels car. It's always fun to leave a bustling city and in 5 minutes be transported back 2000 years with people herding sheep in the mountains. The memories were all coming back. (this is the road I usually took when I spent my year in Israel and we traveled to Tirat Tzvi)
The ride was nice. It was a beautiful sunny day and staring at the scenery helped pass the time.
10:00 - 11:00: Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi - We arrived at Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi at 10:00 and headed straight for the TIV where they package and ship all of their meat products. (You may see some of it on your Kosher grocery shelves). We met with Mark Robinson who was my madrich when I was on Midrash U'ma'aseh. (Midrash U'ma'aseh was the program I was on when I spent a year in Israel after high school...I would have blogged my year in Israel, but blogs didn't exist yet...isn't that weird?)
Mark is the mashgiach at the TIV and we met him in the cafateria. We spoke for about 10 minutes about Kibbutz at which point he offered to give us a tour of the whole factory. We weren't gonna turn that down, so we took an unexpected tour of Tirat Tzvi's meat factory. We basically saw the entire packing process from the last step (where everthing gets boxed and shipped) through the first step where the raw meat comes in from where is was shechted (slaughtered). It was cool...and n0t just the refrigeration part.
After the tour we bought a lot of meat at the factory store. We probably bought about $50 worth of meat for $15. (yum) We parted ways with Mark and met next with the 'adoptive' family that I had during my year there. Their names are Ayal and Malka Halevi. Ayal works in the meat factory after having worked in the date/potato fields for many years. Malka recently started doing some stained glass work and is currently working on a project for Yad Vashem.
We said our good-byes and we continued north toward Tevaria.
11:00 - 12:00: Baptism - Confused? Right outside Tevaria is a place where many people go to get baptized. We stopped for a few minutes just to get a glimpse. There was a group that was just emerging, but we didn't stay for the next round. We were tempted to go in, but something about us being Jewish conviced us otherwise. Our next stop would be a place for lunch.

Family Time

At 8pm, after a couple cups of coffee, Thea picked us up to go the her appartment for dinner. We were lucky that both Abigail and Nina were both home for dinner and we got to see them! Apparently it isn't often that they are both home on a week night for dinner. Mira and Jason and Sandy and Dori(who were in town visiting their kids and grandkids for 6 weeks) were also there. Dinner was delicious and while we were a little sleepy, we had a great time with everyone. After dinner Thea drove us back to the hotel where we crawled into bed exhausted!

Emek Refaim

We took a stroll down to Emek Refaim in the German colony. Neither of us had been there or were really familliar with it. We strolled around and stopped in a few shops. We then headed back to the hotel so we could get ready for Thea to pick us up for dinner.

Michal Negrin

Josh went to the hotel where he figured out the internet connection. I decided to venture over to the Inbal hotel to the Michal Negrin store. I spent forever deciding what to get since there was SO much to choose from! After doing some slight damage to the bank account i went back to the hotel. Where Josh and i decided to take a walk before Thea would pick us up from at 8 for dinner.

Shopping

After lunch we walked around Ben Yehudah and did some shopping. We found a beautiful challah knife which was good since a few weeks back while Josh was cutting the challah ours just broke in half. We also found a beautiful kiddush cup that is on one of those stands and you pour the wine/grape juice through the stem and it funnels through to the little cups. The guy gave us a great "deal" on it. We then headed back to the hotel.

mmmm...lunch

We met Nocky Kleinman along our way back to give him a package and he offered to drive us to Ben Yehudah. When we got in the car Josh was a little embarrased that he broke off the handle to the door but Nocky reassured us that he will just glue it back on to his second hand car. We went and changed money then i took Josh to the Baguette resturant that i remembered from the good ole days. The baguettes were REALLY good! Yum!

The Cardo

We walked through the cardo visiting many stores along the way. We very quickly found that any piece of jewelry i liked was always the most expensive, usually over 1,000 shekel(about $215 for those who have trouble with the math...which i often did). We stoped in at Blue and White where we visited with Udi for a few minutes and bought a mezuzah cover he painted. We got Danya and Jordy little glass kiddush cups with the aleph bet on them(bad call...Jordy already broke his). Then we headed back towards ben Yehudah.

Kotel

After not being in Israel for 8 years(Josh 10) we had a little confussion about how to walk to the kotel, it seems that all the new construction threw us off, but we figured it out and made it to the Kotel. I was the most popular person there as i had a ton of Shaliach Mitzvah money(it seems the Buckmans really wanted us to make it to Israel as they didn't want to shlep all the stuff for the Gerson's). I now have about a billion red strings! We then headed to the Cardo to start spending!

Dan Panaroma

We arrived at the hotel around 8am. We dumped all our stuff and fought off the urge to go to sleep. We decided to head out to the old city and begin our shopping!

We made it!

After a long flight with no sleep we finally made it to Israel! While landing we noticed a large amount of traffic on the roads and hoped that we weren't going that direction(we weren't)! We got off the plane and made our way through passport control and collected our luggage. We then found our driver and we got in the car and were on our way to Jerusalem!

Up To Israel

After dinner on Sunday, we walked backed to the hotel to sleep. There was a guy on the street making these cool spray paint picutres, so we stood there for about 20 minutes watching. (Sorry, no pictures of that). Monday morning was here and it was time to get to JFK for our 1:30 ELAL flight. We took a cab with our luggage and breakfast that Arica bought and headed for the airport. Getting through security went pretty quick, so we had about 2 hours to spend in the airport. (where we shopped). The time finally came. We boarded the plane and we were off.

Dinner

After the game we headed to Abigails for dinner. We debated between Prime Grill and Abigails but since Abigails could give us a later reservation we went there. We had a great dinner and a fun dessert platter! After dinner we headed back to the hotel where we spent a good hour writing blogs!

The Garden

Avi and Eva walked us to The Garden where we watched the NY Rangers beat the Boston Bruins 3-2. It was a very exciting game and we thank the Kellmans again for the tickets!

Avi and Eva

After the show, we stopped at our hotel. We took 6 breaths and headed back out to see Avi and Eva at their apartment. We had a tough time fitting all of us in the apartment, so after a while we went outside where Avi showed us his motorcycle. (yep, you read right...Avi has a motorcycle). We would have liked to stay longer, but the puck was going to soon be dropped at the Garden. It was off to see the Rangers VS. the Bruins.

The Producers

We saw The Producers.

FOX NEWS

We said goodbye to Avi and Eva and then went with Jodi and Shush to FOX News. We had a 20 minue window of time until we needed to get to The Producers, so we rushed over there. As Shush warned us, security ate up most of our time clearing us to enter the building. Shush then gave us the abridged tour of the FOX news room. She explained what happens at each desk and area and how each stage plays a part in the news we see on TV. She then took us to see the new studio where Geraldo would be taping his show. Then she showed us a control room that wasn't being used. She has a cool job! We then raced out of FOX to the play since we were running late. Shush and Jodi were so nice to walk us all the way to the theater! I think they wanted to make sure we made it there ok! We thanked them and said goodbye and headed into the show.

Lunch at Circa

While in the cab to Circa we called Ari to let him know we wanted to Rangers tickets. We then arrived at Circa happy to see we hadn't kept anyone waiting. We were to be meeting Avi, Eva, Jodi B. and Shush. Jodi, Eva and Shush were running a 4 mile race earlier in the morning so we knew there was the possibility they would be a little late...they were! Once they got there we all figured out what to eat...cheese sticks, no fish sticks. We had a nice time chatting and eating(although i think some people didn't enjoy their chulent wraps). We had to hurry out of there if we were going to fit in Shush's tour of FOX NEWS(for those who don't know, our dear friend Shush is a producer for FOX news...hey, that is 2 producers in one day)! After begging every person in the world to take our picture(seriously...i asked a lady to take our picure and she said she couldn't because she just had arm surgery...i think the salad she was holding weighed more than the camera...what a lame excuse) we headed to the bus and up to FOX.

TKTS

We headed to TKTS. I joined the line while Josh went to drop off his laptop at the hotel. We had decided that if tickets were still available by the time we made it to the front of the line we could see a 3pm show of either The Producers, Movin' Out, In My Life or Fiddler on the Roof. After waiting, and waiting, and waiting we finall made it to the front of the line...OK, so it only took less than an hour. We got tickets to the 3pm showing of the Producers and at 50% off! No time to celebrate the good buy because we need to grab a cab so we won't be late for our 1 o'clock lunch plans.

Breakfast at the Kellmans

After a visit to the hotel gym, minyan for Josh at the 5th Street Shul we met at Lanie, Ari and Maayan's for breakfast. There was some slight confussion about uptown vs. downtown but we both made it there eventually! Chef Ari wowed us with his cullinary tallents and we enjoyed a delicious breakfast of toasted bagels, cream cheese and eggs. Yummy! We had a great visit with Maayan who was all smiles and laughter! What a cutie she is! Ira and Rona stopped by for a visit as well(although we know they just wanted an excuse to stop by and see their cute granddaugher). As we were getting ready to leave it was brought to our attention that Ira's season tickets for tonights NY Rangers game were available and if we wanted them we could have them. We decided that if we could get tickets to a early broadway show we would take them. We gathered our belongings, said our goodbyes and headed back to the subway(downtown) to our next stop....TKTS.

The Big (rotten) Apple

Well, we made it to NY and I'm adding this entry from Ari and Lanie's apartment. Everything from the time Shabbos ended until we got to the hotel in NY went perfectly. Saba and Savta picked up Danya and Jordy (see above) and Bubs and Pops took us to the airport. We got to Newark around 10:45 PM (EST) Saturday night and got to our hotel around 11:30. As soon as we got there we saw lots of Jews. Not that that's unusual for NY, but it was slightly out of the ordinary. Arica then remembered that the national Amit dinner is at the hotel we are staying at on Sunday night. We thought for a second that we were already in Israel. Anyway, we went to our room and dropped off our carry on luggage. (The hotel was supposed to bring us our regular luggage). Since this vacation is going to consist of a lot of eating and shopping, we decided to get an early jump on the 'eating' part and went to "My Most Favorite Desert". (keep in mind that it's 12:30 at night). We got there thinking we finally got away from home and here we are without anyone we know nearby. As soon as we sat down, I saw someone across the room waving to me. I looked a little closer. It was David Friedman (classmate of mine from the Academy), his parents and his wife's parents and siblings. His father sits next to us in Shul when we stay in Skokie. I guess if you go to NY and Israel, your bound to see people you know. After that we walked around a little and went back to the hotel and collapsed.
See the picture of our luggage above. Guess how many of the bags are ours?.....
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That's right, only the green one...the other 2 have stuff for people in Israel...

Getting closer

We should probably start packing....

Before the trip

We are taking a trip to Israel from Nov. 22 - 27. We are leaving Chicago Sat. night Nov. 19th and staying in NY until the 21st. Our flight to Israel is on Monday afternoon and we are scheduled to arrive around 7AM Tuesday. We will do our best to keep this updated as we make our way around the Holy Land. We'll also add pictures as we can. Your comments are welcome, so comment away! Talk to y'all soon.
Shalom