It's stressful just to come up with the title sometimes, you know?
Anyhow, life is a bit busy at the moment. We just had a long weekend. Sunday and Monday were each a holy day, the Birth of the Bab and the Birth of Baha'u'llah, respectively, as celebrated according to the lunar calendar - whereas most other places in the world celebrate them according to the solar calendar.
Mark and I rented a car for the occasion. It was really nice to be able to go places whenever it was convenient. But then, we also realized that a car isn't all that necessary.
We went to IKEA - yup, there's one here, too. It was nice to just veg out there - with slightly suspended disbelief that we were in our own country... heck, IKEA is all in Swedish, no matter where it is!! So, mutual confusion!
Then we went to Herzliyya. Wow was it overrated by people. Who goes to "explore" in a suburb? Well, there was a cute little strip of shops, so we went there first, then we headed over to the "hip" area of town with over-priced shops and over-priced restaurants. They also happen to be overrated. We went to the "best sushi restaurant in Israel". Why did we think that meant it would be good sushi? It was mediocre - and expensive. Oh well, lesson learned. At least now we know we're not missing anything in Haifa! In fact, Haifa is quite a bit more interesting.
Monday we had a pancake breakfast with some friends, went out to Bahji together (this is the place where Baha'u'llah is buried - and we get to visit regularly, wow!), and then came back to Haifa for a picnic lunch in the sculpture garden across from our home. Afterward we all went to the holy day celebration - with oodles of people!!
I'm exhausted, but content.
This is great! You are doing all the exploring so that when we come next winter we can bypass all the not so great stuff and just get the good stuff. Have you found out anything about the bird migrations? I would think that the end of the winter phase would be coming up soon. I guess I'm interested in seeing it, so therefore you should be too?
I'll check around :-)