We were invited to a wedding of Saul’s cousin Sylvia’s daughter, Adi, in Israel, and wonder of wonders, we were able to book the cheapest flight ever to London! Saul and I both flew for a total of $750.00 round-trip, which included an extra charge for one bag. After persuading Rif to join us on our adventures, she and Paul also booked a flight to London. From there, a flight to Israel is much more reasonable and takes about four hours. Virgin Airlines had just that month opened a direct flight from London to Tel Aviv. Despairing of the crossrail line opening anytime soon, Ari moved again to an even more beautiful two-bedroom, two-bath glass-walled flat on the 38th floor of a building on Canary Wharf overlooking the Thames. He can now walk to work in another high-rise tower about 10 minutes from his flat. Little did we all know what a boon that would be in “these uncertain times.” Saul and I arrived there first thing in the morning from Orlando, and Rif and Paul arrived from Philadelphia within hours of us. Ari had moved in the previous afternoon, so we were met with huge stacks of boxes and chaos everywhere. At first I thought his flat was tiny compared to the previous one, but as we all dug in to unpack and organize, I began to appreciate the beauty of the space. By lunchtime, with all of us working, almost everything had been unpacked, organized and stashed away.
The next day, the five of us toured the
Tower of London and the
Crown Jewels, returning to the flat on the
Thames Clipper. During the week that we all spent in London, we also toured
The British Museum,
Covent Garden,
Borough Market,
The Masonic Temple,
The Victoria and Albert Museum and the town of
Greenwich and its market. We also saw a performance of
The Book of Mormon at a much more modern theater than the one in which Ari, Saul and I saw The Lion King the previous year. We had really great seats, right up front, and thought the satire was very funny. We enjoyed the experience very much! We also had some great food while we were there, including an Indian restaurant,
Farszi Café, just a few blocks from the theater and a Chinese restaurant, the
Royal China on Canary Wharf near Ari’s flat.
At the end of one week in London, Paul flew back to the U.S. and Ari, Rif, Saul and I took the Virgin flight to Tel Aviv. I must mention that the Virgin Airlines flight was sooooo comfy and we discovered a new liqueur that Ari insisted we try that is offered complimentary on the airline—Amarula. It is made from a fruit of the same name and we all adored it. We found it in our supermarket on our first trip to stock up the three-bedroom, two-bath, apartment that Ari had reserved for us for three weeks. We finished the bottle before returning home. Our apartment in Israel was very comfortable and centrally located in Netanya, although the elevator in the building was a tiny little thing that we jammed ourselves into each time we came or went. Rif had not been back to Israel since she was a three-year-old, so did not really know some of her first cousins who grew up there. The mother of the bride, though, was raised through her teenage years in the U.S. and they were playmates for many years. Saul and I had spent two full summers in Israel with our kids (who each did a junior year of high school on a kibbutz there) and we and Ari had been in contact with them for many years. Although Saul and Ari both possess Israeli passports, Rif did not, and since they had no record of her at the airport, we got caught up in the red tape on arrival for quite a while. Our cousin, Shira, in Haifa was able to help us out in getting her an Israeli passport, but it took the better part of an afternoon to cut the red tape again. Another big glitch on arrival was that the rental agency only had one vehicle that would accommodate all of us and our luggage, and that had a stick shift! Luckily, Saul knew how to drive one, but hadn’t used the skill in almost 30 years. Our trepidation grew as we stalled quite a few times on practice sessions around the parking lot, but Saul got his chops back and the drive to Netanya, late at night, was uneventful. The rental agency came to our apartment and exchanged vehicles the next day.
Our first breakfast in Netanya was delicious shakshuka on Herzl Street, the main drag in Netanya. We also ate several times at one of our favorite restaurants on Herzl Street,
Alonzo. The beach in Netanya was even more inviting than I remembered, and there is now an elevator that takes one down from the beautiful promenade up above. When we first stayed there, the long trek up a long, steep, sandy incline was really daunting after a day on the beach. One of our first road trips was to the
Rosh Hanikra Grottoes, where we waited in line for almost half an hour for the packed cable cars to take us down. Of course, the highlight of any trip to Israel is the old city of Jerusalem. We traveled and spent the day there twice in the course of our vacation. The second time, we booked a guided underground tour of the excavations along the Western Wall. While in Jerusalem, we also visited the Arab market, the Jewish market, the Cardo, and The Holy Sepulcher. During our time praying at the Kotel and tucking our handwritten prayers into the cracks, Rif was pooped on by a dove that was nesting in the Wall above, which the surrounding women rushed to tell us, was a very lucky sign. No trip to Israel would be complete without a visit to the
Beit HaShita kibbutz where Jessica and Ari had each spent a year in high school. Ari still has a very close relationship with his surrogate mother and little brother, even after all these years. In the cemetery on the kibbutz, we visited the graves of Amichai Yarchi, the omniscient director of the American Kibbutz High School Program, and Jessica’s surrogate father during her year there, Michael Seckel. We marveled at the magnificent sky over Mt. Gilboa from an observation deck and viewed the miles of banana trees under protective net coverings that blanket the kibbutz these days. That evening we happened upon a lovely restaurant,
Kimmel ba Gilboa, where we had dinner as we traveled over the mountains. We visited the old city of
Jaffa on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, and spent a day wandering in and out of artisan shops and art galleries.
The Friday before the wedding, we were invited to cousin, Sylvia and Moshe’s home in Netanya for Shabbat dinner. The wedding of Adi and Ayal was incredible! We got to catch up with family whom we hadn’t seen in many years. We enjoyed all the joyous quirkiness that goes on in an Orthodox Jewish wedding. We also couldn’t believe the quantity of food and drink that was served. The serving of cocktails and delicious hors d’oeuvres pre-wedding were followed by a sit-down meal at a table laden with plates of food that were replaced by the waitstaff every time they appeared to be a little bit empty and they were replaced within a moment. This was in addition to the selection of main courses and dessert. That was followed by a dessert bar. We left stuffed, sated, and happy.
We spent a remarkable day traveling to
Masada and the Dead Sea area. This was the most grueling part of our trip and we were so delighted that Rif, in her tenuous condition of health, was able to handle all of it. We enjoyed the
Dead Sea area so much that we were plotting during the whole trip as to how we could arrange to spend more time there. But, unfortunately, we ran out of time to make the trek back. Ari and Rif took some golf ball-sized chunks of salt/mineral crystals as souvenirs and for their healing properties. We found an amazing restaurant on the way back,
LeNagev BaNegev, with a character of an owner/chef, in the city of Arad.
Cousins Shira and Mark invited us for lunch in Haifa along with several other cousins. Their apartment balcony has sweeping views of the mountainous city and Mediterranean port. We spent another day in Haifa when Shira helped us apply for Rif’s Israeli passport and for Saul to renew his passport. Although Rif and Shira barely knew each other, I was struck by how much they looked alike while I observed them having a conversation facing each other. I suggested they stand nose-to-nose so that I could take a photo to show them how alike their profiles were. Shira took us to see some of the sights in Haifa, including the
Bahai Gardens, a ride on the
Carmelit cable train, a tour of the downtown shopping district and the street market where we had a delicious lunch together at a restaurant owned by a family of Arab women. On our third visit, a week later, we picked up the passports which had been mailed to Shira, and we celebrated Shira’s birthday, along with cousins Eleazar and his wife Pirha, and members of her husband, Mark’s family at a nearby fish restaurant.
The weekend after Adi’s wedding, I agreed to help her sister, Meytal, make
rainbow challahs to take when the bride and groom’s family met for a vacation weekend at
Banyas before the bride and groom left for their honeymoon in Mexico.
Another highlight of our trip was visiting
The Shrine of the Book, the museum that houses the
Dead Sea Scrolls. Unbeknownst to us, the entire model of the ancient city of Jerusalem had been disassembled and moved to their grounds a few years earlier from its original location at the Holy Land Hotel, where Saul and I had visited it back in 1985 on our first trip to Israel. The new venue was so much more impressive, as it was possible to view the city from above and all the way around. Equally impressive was our visit to
Yad Vashem. This iconic holocaust museum is quite different and expanded greatly from the one that we vividly remember visiting all those years ago.
We also spent an evening wandering around Tel Aviv where we met cousin’s of Rif’s husband, Paul, at a trendy new vegan restaurant called
Anastasia. The imaginative food was delicious, but rather pricey. We passed an hour in the city on a pleasant, moonlit evening lolling around the famous
Agam fountain, apparently a popular thing for Israeli families to do. We also took a walk along the seaside on the hotel-lined concrete promenade. We spent a day wandering around the ancient city of
Safed, popping in and out of artists shops, and meandering the the narrow winding cobblestone streets looking for the historic Sephardic Ari Synagogue that we remembered visiting years earlier. Its existence has been obscured by the much wealthier Ashkenazic Ari Synagogue supported by the Chasidic community. The lone caretaker opened it for us when we finally found it by driving around the city. It was worth the hunt and was as quaint, spiritual and beautiful as we remembered. We left donations to maintain it with the caretaker. On the ride back, we stopped in Tiberius for a dinner of traditional Israeli dishes by the seaside. The food was delicious, but the experience was marred by our waiter who insisted that we pay much more than the price listed on the menu. He became really obnoxious and threatening, and rather than ruin our beautiful day, we paid the bill and left.
We spent a day touring
Caesarea and were wowed by the extent of the restoration that has occurred in the last 35 years since we last visited this site. On our return to Netanya, we visited our favorite felafel joint,
Musa, where the young proprietor, Gavriel Danan, on several occasions, prepared amazing overstuffed pitas with all the fixings (
salatim) to order for us. He even made a “care package” for us to take back to Ari in London and refused to charge us for it. An observant Jew, he told Rif that he would add her name to the
mishaberach (prayers for healing) that are recited at his synagogue.
Cousin Sylvia invited us over one evening for dessert, and we were joined by two other cousins, Srueli, and Willie, brothers who were kind enough to take a long bus trip from Jerusalem to Netanya and back to spend an evening with us. We spent a lot of time reminiscing about our parents and relatives, told each other stories that we had never heard about the previous generation, and took iPhone photos of our old photo albums to share.
Although we spent quite a few days enjoying the gorgeous beach in Netanya, Rif could never quite get enough of it, and we all were very sorry to leave our beautiful weather, comfy apartment, and meltingly delicious chocolate babkas behind when it was time to return to London.
One of the highlights of our second week in London, before returning home, was an invitation from Ari’s friend, Jen, who plays second violin with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, to hear a performance of “
Belshazzar’s Feast” in which she was moonlighting, as the extravagant piece requires extra musicians and a full choir. The venue itself was a marvel of acoustic, mid-century modern design. Trekking to a restaurant,
Brasserie Blanc, across the street before the performance from our rail stop was grueling for us as a wind-driven, icy rain besieged us as we crossed a long bridge over the Thames. The restaurant, however, was warm and cozy and we had a lovely meal there before braving the weather again to take our seats at the concert. London audiences are amazingly attentive and polite. Unlike here, you could hear a pin drop in the audience in the quiet interludes. The concert itself was awesome! Jen joined us briefly at the intermission and afterwards, we returned to the same restaurant together for drinks and snacks. We took an Uber back after that. Jen, by the way, was the friend who joined us two years earlier with her mother, Margaret, and friend, Seonid, to run in the Princess Marathon at Disney dressed as Pocohontas.
Our favorite palace to tour in England is
Hampton Court Palace and we couldn’t wait to show it to Rif. Doing the tour justice is an all-day, physically exhausting undertaking, but worth it nevertheless. Afterwards, we recovered at a charming little pub,
Henry’s Kitchen, down the street from the Palace.
Back at Ari’s flat in Canary Wharf, we spent a day wandering around the
Museum of London, Docklands, and we prepared for the long flight home, savoring the spectacular views of London from his balcony, touring the semi-indoor gardens several floors up at Canary Wharf and enjoying “full English” breakfasts with giant lattes.
A few days later, Saul and I were back home in Orlando celebrating the special birthday of Susan’s friend, Chris, for whom I baked a
carrot cake. Rif returned to New Jersey. Chris had flown in to Orlando from Chicago with a few friends to celebrate her birthday in the Magic Kingdom. During our day together there, Saul got the highest score possible in the shooting gallery that is the Buzz Lightyear ride. We were fascinated watching the production surrounding setting up the gigantic Christmas tree in the lobby of the
Grand Floridian Hotel. As Christmas came to Disney, our children and grandchildren arrived for their Thanksgiving vacation. Jess, a marvel of organization, and Izzy went to Susan’s house to help her organize her garage so that she could park her new Tesla inside. We spent an afternoon with Ken visiting Adele at The Villages for her birthday. Ari looked very spiffy in his tux as he attended a company-sponsored holiday party in London. Sami decided to use our mandolin slicer while preparing one of our family meals and took out a slice of her thumb. Luckily, the doctors at Celebration Hospital Emergency decided it did not need stitches.
After the family returned home, and before Sami returned ahead of her December 31 flight to Taiwan to do her (ill-fated) semester abroad, the three of us spent an afternoon doing the “gingerbread crawl” around the Disney hotels. In that pursuit, we visited the Saratoga Springs Resort for the first time.
Sami persuaded me to have a virtual reality adventure at
The Void in Disney Springs. We chose to do a
Wreck It Ralph adventure and it was an experience unlike any other I have had in my life. I am really glad she talked me into it. Rif joined us after her cruise again this year, and the Florida crew celebrated Chanukah together. Another celebration took place at a member’s jewelry shop in Disney Springs where the SOJC congregation joined to kindle the Chanukah candles and sing Chanukah songs. We celebrated Rif’s birthday with brunch at Boma this past year and took some shots of the flamingos around the back at Jambo House.
While Ari visited right before Christmas, and was here for an unusually quiet New Year’s Eve, we went again to visit Adele in The Villages. He stayed with us for a few weeks before returning to London, January 7.
