rain down the stairs

Friday (12/23)

The next morning we woke up and had one of those great israeli breakfasts - all sorts of cheeses and hummus with pita, and we even had some fresh avocado straight from the tree (itzik knows this guy who has a couple), and i finished up with a bowl of pillows.

speaking of which...i'll be right back. i feel like some right now...

so we headed out to zichon ya'akov (memory of jacob), a town up near haifa. it started out as a nice and sunny day that promised rain later. before we left, i took a look out of their kitchen window at the beautiful view of the beach half a mile away.

it was a short drive (1 hr) during which i caught up a little more on this journal. i'd driven by the hotel we were going to stay at (havat habaron - "the baron's ranch") before, both on birthright and on one of my previous trips with limor's family, but i got a better look at it this time. it's a pretty recognizable hotel, because it looks like a set of stairs built into the side of a mountain.

we had a couple hours before check-in, so we spent that time checking out zichon ya'akov. it was one of the first villages in the region, so it's got a lot of history. one of the big attractions is the winery, where you can take tours and sample their wares at their restaurant. we took a look around, but skipped the tour in favor of going shopping. plus, i'd already seen a winery in france, so i was good on that score.

also, right when we arrived, we tried to find parking on the narrow, windy, mountain streets. when we finally found a regular, unassuming spot on the road right behind another car. after we got out of the car, this lady next to us launched into a five-minute tirade of "helpful" advice about how we can't park there no it's illegal to park there we should park in this other place (that obviously is not for parking) but we shouldn't park here because it's illegal to park there we should...she just would not stop. we were like "okay thanks, we'll take our chances" but she could not give up - she pulled around beside us and continued to be "helpful", until finally we just ignored her and she drove off. weird.

after the winery we went over to this quaint, renovated street. it was originally the main thoroughfare of the town, and had places like the town's first water pump, the place where the first town council used to meet in a big circle, and the town's very first mcdonalds. like all renovated tourist towns, there are plenty of kitchy places to shop for handmade, locally-made, elven-made, etc gifts. so we went browsing, and aviva and limor spent like an hour at this one place that sold - guess what - clothes. not even authentic or unique clothes, but regular average department store clothing. itzik and i just looked at each other - we've been through this before.

it started to cloud over, so we piled back in the car and headed up the mountain to the hotel. it was pretty windy by the time we got there, and it had already started to drizzle. we checked in and explored the hotel a bit. like i mentioned before, it's built into the mountain like a set of stairs, so each level sticks farther out than the terrace above it. to get from floor to floor, there's a diagonal elevator, like a cross between an elevator and an escalator. if you're not paying attention (and this happened quite a bit), you'll get knocked over by momentum when it starts and stops.

it was very pretty outside (it hadn't started raining) but it was chilly, so we headed up to the jacuzzi and indoor pool. for some reason, the jacuzzi / sauna / shower room was separated from the pool by a short walk through the dining halls. in fact, the front window of the pool looked out over an outdoor pool and the patio deck, but the back window of the pool looked into a dining hall. i can't imagine why - think of how weird it would be if you were eating lunch and some old dude / dudette in a bikini was doing laps in front of you.

i noticed that there was a connection from the indoor to an unfilled outdoor pool, which was unfortunately closed, but it would have been really cool to swim back and forth from the cold to the heat. until i noticed later that there was a rainpipe draining into the outdoor section of the pool - who knows what's in that water?

after the oil-bath from wednesday, limor and i weren't feeling much like jacuzzi, so we left back to our room on the 14th level (the main lobby / dining hall / pool areas were on the 15th). barak joined us, and we tried watching tv, but it was really hard to find something on the ten channels we got. i did watch some bizarre kids show featuring two guys dressed up as the red ("adom") and green ("yarok") lights of a traffic light, who also rapped about the importance of looking both ways before crossing (some kid almost got run over by a tractor at one point). i was trying really hard to figure out what was going on / why any child would watch it, when fortunately limor saved me by changing the channel.

we ended up on the MGM channel, which played old famous movies or something. against my better judgment, i really enjoyed the movie which was on. it was a very engaging tale of a black man (played by a young sidney poitier) who somehow fell in with five german nuns in the middle of nowhere, texas. he gets suckered into building them a chapel, but because of his big heart he is slowly won over, and wins over, the group of nuns, and everybody learns a valuable lesson. i'm not sure what the actual movie title is, but the hebrew translation was "five nuns and a man".

aha, the actual title is "lilies of the field".

so while we were watching the movie, itzik was in the process of getting us a room change due to the incredibly noisy heating unit. it didn't bother me, but then again i'm special. that's what my mom tells me, anyway. so we eventually switched to the 5th level which didn't have as good of a view, but by that point it didn't really matter, because it was cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

after the movie, limor and barak were bored, and i was hungry, so we went back up to the dining floor. actually, i think we watched the movie before we went swimming, but whatever. i couldn't wait the hour or so until dinner (6:30pm), so we split a tuna salad in the lounge area. it was gigantic, so itzik and aviva helped us finish it when they came up. i think we went back down to the room until dinnertime, but i'm not sure.

we enjoyed a very nice meat meal at our "reserved" table in the "fancy" dining area. instead of sitting next to the pool, we had a higher-level area (next to the jacuzzi room, although no glass windows). there were all sorts of dishes (and parve desserts blech), but as always the best part was the hummus and bread. we took our leisurely time to sample everything, and walked back to the room, crossing the windy patio deck.

we chilled in the room for a while, watching some israeli programs (i played on my computer), and then we went back upstairs to the lounge for what i was told was dancing. instead, we were met by one set of relatives - limor's uncle, aunt, and cousin shaked (pronounced shah-KED). after some chatting, the hotel staff brought out a birthday cake for me with the message "mazel tov to 120" iced in hebrew. the cake was good, but we found out later that the hotel made a mistake and gave the chocolate cake limor's parents order to another family, and we got their cake. it even had (in english!) "happy birthday jeremy" - and it was chocolate - so i was kinda sad that the other family ate it. oh well.

so the dancing was pretty lame - the music started in the 1950s and was slowly making it's way to more current times, but only old people were on the floor - so we left to go to sleep.