Our First Road Trip in Israel

It has been an interesting few weeks but the most interesting part was mine and Elie's road trip to Eilat.
Elie's grandmother, who lives in NY, needs to leave for the winter due to her asthma. Every winter she either goes to relatives in California or comes with a friend or relative to Israel. This year, Elie's parents were successful in convincing her to come to Israel even though she had no one to come with. They found a great hotel in Eilat (Bet Shemesh, believe it or not, is actually still too cold for her) and they brought her there in the middle of January when she arrived in Israel. Every week that she was there, someone from the family (Elie's father, sister) went to spend 2 days with her to keep her company. Our "turn" for going served the purpose of spending time with her along with transporting her back to Bet Shemesh (she is unable to fly/take a bus by herself). So this past Wednesday morning, Elie and I embarked on our first ever Tani-less vacation. My in-laws and sister-in-law graciously offered to be the babysitters for the 2 days that we were gone.

The drive was truly fascinating. It took only about 4 hours, with one stop, and it was absolutely beautiful. We drove through desert areas where there were miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) of what seemed to be Bedouin villages. There were signs to beware of camels in addition to quite a few real camels and other livestock. We stopped after about 2 hours to stretch our legs in a town called Mitzpe Ramon. Immediately after leaving Mitzpe Ramon, we started the long descent down a HUGE mountain (I'm sure it has a name). The drive was basically one big zig-zag down the mountain until we reached the bottom where we basically drove through about 2 hours of actual desert, only seeing another car every 10 or 15 minutes. What was really cool was seeing some army training areas with tanks and chayalim and big empty stone buildings. Elie wanted to know if they had paint-balling there, we're still looking into it.

We finally arrived in Eilat which is basically just a resort town with a big ocean, lots of hotels, and tons of stores. The hotel we stayed in was really beautiful and the staff was so nice. Once we changed out of our "winter" clothes, we took a walk with Elie's grandmother along the boardwalk.
Israeli boardwalks are much like the run-of-the-mill Ocean City boardwalk - food, cheap clothes, odd looking figurines, half-naked people, and a wonderful sea breeze. I thought that the one difference would be extremely beneficial to us - surely the food (ice cream, smoothies, etc.) would all be kosher, right? Well, not exactly. After asking nearly every ice cream place we came to (don't judge me), we realized that, while they all use kosher ingredients, they are all open on Shabbat and therefore had no teudat kashrut. Bummer, big bummer. However, the walk was really nice and when we got back we had some time to sit by the pool and put our feet in!! I literally don't even know when the last time either of us has done that so it was a real treat. We ate dinner in the hotel dining room - amazing buffet, tons of food, tons of variety.
The next day we awoke to some clouds and found out, from Elie's grandmother that "this is the first cloudy day we've had in a month" - of course, just our luck. After an AMAZING, HUGE buffet breakfast the likes of which I have never seen before, we took a walk to another shopping mall and bought, what else, toys and clothes for Tani. The great thing, well ONE of the great things, about Eilat is that you don't pay tax so it's really worth it to do some shopping (woohoo). Additionally, because of the "matzav hakalkali" (economical situation), they are not experiencing nearly as much tourism as they usually do so the prices in general are greatly reduced. In the afternoon, Elie and I went to a place about a 10 minute walk from our hotel called "Ir Hamelachim". It's set in this huge castle-like structure and there are 3 different "exhibits" you can visit. One had all kinds of cool science type stuff. One was an IMAX movie about the history of the Pharaohs. And the coolest one was a walk through this cave that had little mini exhibits taking you through history. You pressed a button marked either "Ivrit" or "English" and were told the story behind each model, starting with Adam and Chava. It was really fun (even though we know how the story ends) to see how they depicted some of our major Bible personalities. We spent about 2 hours there and then went back to the hotel. It still wasn't so hot but the sun had come out and it was nice enough to sit by the pool.
Our full day of vacation ended with another amazing dinner at the hotel.
On Friday we ate a hearty breakfast (and that's an understatement), while being visited by a variety of the hotel staff who couldn't stop talking about how amazing Elie's grandmother is and how much they loved having her as a guest. She had been there for about 5 weeks so they had all really gotten to know her and were genuinely sad to see her leave. The trip back was uneventful, thank G-d, and we got home in plenty of time to do some Shabbat prep. Elie's mother had gotten us basically all of our food so I just made soup, dessert and we were all set.
We were very happy to see Tani again and to give him all the presents we had gotten. He seemed kind of confused but I think he's over it now. The first thing Elie and I said when we saw him was that he looked bigger, even after just 2 days.

Shabbat was very nice but very rainy. While rain is excellent and we pray for it every day, it still a bit annoying when it rains all Shabbat and I can't take Tani out at all. We were all a little stir-crazy come 7:00 but hopefully the rain was as replenishing as we all needed.