Thursday

Dana and I started sort of slow this morning. Over coffee we decided to go to the Rishon Museum however their director passed away a couple of days ago so the museum was going to close early at 2, which meant we needed to get there by 12 to get an English speaker tour guide. It was 10:00 so we didn't think there was a problem...

On Monday, we rented the Yaron's a car to go to Galilee since their car is too old for the trip so that rented car had to be back by 2 today. We still didn't think we had a problem. Due to some communication problems and misunderstanding we thought we had to take the car back to the airport. Get the visual here... Dana driving a 7 passenger KIA mini van and I'm driving the VERY small 4 passenger something-or-other right on her bumper, we head for the airport. After only one wrong turn we make it to the airport and turn in the car...The time... 11:45

Okay... it's too late to make it all the way downtown to the old part of the city so we decide to go to the mall which is close to Mickey & Marianne's house. We found out there are two malls... sort of like Northgate & Hamilton Place in Chattanooga. We make a lot of turns and ask a lot of people for directions. One question that kept coming up... Which mall? (canyon is the word for mall). Finally we find a Russian speaker who knew no English but had the best acting skills and we went right to it. Come to find out we had been past it several times only on the back side of it!!

Now it's time for lunch! We find the Food Court... what an experience... everyone has samples for you to try and they try to lure you in with the samples. The Shwarma Shop won! For those of you who don't know, shwarma is lamb or chicken with lots of... well shwarma seasonings. It is on a rotissary but it is vertical. So you have this large 3 foot skewer with stacks of meat on it and then they shave off a section starting at the top and going to the bottom. The nice young men at the counter ask if we would like salad?... okay... Pita?... okay... Miscommunication again... Dana and I got the "truck-driver's special" which is what our family calls the huge platter of food that they brought us. We thought we would get a pita, with meat, with salad... sandwich style. Well, we thought wrong!! They gave us about 1/2 pound of meat, 3 falafel, hummus, salad and a pita. They had already given us 2 small salad plates which we had filled with all the other kinds of salads; cold salad, spicey salads, cabbage salad, carrot salad, etc. hahaha!! Everyone was sitting in the food court thinking, "silly American women... the shwarma shop just did it again"!!

On our way out of the mall, we decided to get a coffee which is a truly delicious experience here. We sat in the coffee shop with our coffees chatting and just having a great time. We chose that coffee shop because of wi-fi but once again Dana's IPOD would not connect. We have had a difficult time with Internet the entire time we have been here. After drinking our lovely coffee we get the bill... 36 shekels for 2 cups of coffee... about $6 each but it was a great experience which is what we always say after we have spent too much money because of miscommunications!

We are resting after our big day!