The weather was so beautiful today that all walks of life were out enjoying the sea, from the inebriated, to the fully clad Arab women, to the hookah smoking men, children galore, cosmopolitan young men and women, joggers, and of course, many camera/map toting tourists. We continued north to another shopping street (I am not naming these streets because frankly, I cannot remember! ).We ended up walking through a wonderful outdoor market that dead ends at the point where Allenby, King George and a few other major roads converge.
We followed Allenby (north?) to Ben Yehuda, and then walked that street until we found this great little cafe to have lunch at. We all made good healthy choices (and I discovered that I really don't hate Kalmata Olives??!)
Emily's host came to fetch us, we said good bye to Joan, and we piled in the car to go back to the beach to this beautiful outdoor shopping area that was converted from an old railway line (it used to run from Alexandria to Constantinople, right through Tel Aviv ). Now it houses very nice, trendy, chic, expensive stores. It also is a hot spot for bridal picture taking, and there were at least five beautiful brides that we saw there being photographed!
We said good bye to Emily and her host, and walked (no kind of ran) down to the beach to get a photo of the sunset, but we were barely too late. We took some photos anyways.
We walked back to The Trieste, and Odelia (that is the women who owns the B&B) called us to ask us if we were still interested in dinner with her. By the way, it may seem like all we are doing is eating, but I promise there is a lot of stuff in between our meals!
Of course we are interested, so minutes later Odelia picks us up, with her 8 year old daughter Elaine (so cute, loves the son Call Me Maybe :) ) and away we go!! She takes us to this really interesting part of town to this amazing restaurant where we have so much food and freshly out of the oven pita bread (oh my goodness) that we cannot believe our eyes. It was tasty, and we barely had room for the rugalach and blueberry bun we purchased an hour earlier at this wonderful bakery stand, but we managed.
Now earlier Odelia mentioned that she was going to a Bar Mitzvah and said we could join her if we were interested. Hell Yeah, we were interested!!!!
So while she took Elaine home to put her to bed, we went back to the room to shower and change (long pants, long sleeve top) and minutes later we were off to our first Orthodox Bar Mitzvah!! Wow, talk about culture shock. We had to wear these slips over our pants, the men were all on one side of the room dancing and merry making, and the women were on the other side of a big wall divider with hundreds of little children wreaking havoc and looking religiously adorable! We were totally sore thumbs in a sea of Orthodox women, but they were so hospitable, insisting that we eat (again) and we even had a table picture of us (I am sure in a few weeks the mother of the Bar Mitvah boy is going to be looking at picture proofs and saying "who the heck are those two people???!!!". )
Day two proved to be even better than day one. I cannot even imagine what tomorrow will bring!
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