Saturday, September 30, 2017

Trip Day 30 - Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv

Saturday September 30

This is going to be a totally lazy day. Not much to do. All shops are closed. All restaurants and cafes too. The whole day not a single car was driving. Every so often I watched from the balcony how everybody is walking or biking in the middle of the road. Mainly young families. The little ones are so cute. 

We are getting breakfast though in the sister-hotel. On the way back to ours I have to take another photo of the "telephone-people". 



Yesterday we did find a little box with these chocolate clusters and a granola bar for each in our room. James opened his this morning and I had to say to be careful because he had laid them right next to some lava rocks from "the Horns of Hattin". Biting on those could have been a disaster.



Around noon we had enough of being lazy in the room so we walked to the beach. James has his ambitions. He swam in the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee and now in the Mediteranaen. I went in to my knees and must say it was lovely. Also nice waves.






         
Strangely the whole length of the beach had many "swimming forbidden" signs and thousands of swimmers who didn't seem to care. I know the photos don't look like it but there were happy people everywhere. 





While James was changing like a contortionist wrapped in the hotel towel (toilets, changing rooms, lockers, everything closed) I stretched a moment in the sun.



Ha-ha, the contortionist photo got cropped.
 


And then we found front-row seats under the overhang of the restaurant where we ate twice. And there was a lot to see. That young man was putting up a band between two poles. He was working on it for quite a while and we were wondering. And then he practiced tightrope walking. Quite entertaining.



Yup, people watching. 


Eventually it was lunch time. With our provisions, James' pocketknife and the butter we "stole" from the breakfast table we made a feast. Quite nice. 



We left the door open all afternoon. The temperature was lovely. We had a kettle in the room and could make tea or coffee later. Teatime on the balcony too. We had bought some cake the day before too.


Yom Kippur
I wonder how that would work at home?
You can't drive anywhere and everything is closed. No problem in our CR community. You could just get together with your friends in the neighborhood. If you want to spend it with your family, somebody has to drive the day before and spend the night. After dark whoever drives can go home. Interesting idea. 

Sorting our luggage went better then I thought. Washing after arrival will be fun. Salt stains (from the sweat) and grey dust from the rocks (because at some point I had not been ashamed to scoot from rock to rock on my bottom). Loads of pamphlets with info I have to "digest" when home. Not many souvenirs (sorry, kids, most is made in China).

We tried to fall asleep around 9 pm. The alarm will ring at 1:30 am. The taxi was ordered for 2:15 am. Shekels saved for the taxi and hotel bill taken care of (with leftover shekels and difference with plastic ... works like a charm that way).

See you soon!

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