Yesterday we enjoyed a relaxing Shabbat on the beach in Tel Aviv. Hundreds of young people. The funniest thing was that Eric wore a Gator shirt, and a young girl said "Go Gators." We started talking to her (Becca Leibowitz) and it turns out that she goes to UF (She's at Hebrew U now) and Josh took her to a dance. Before we got back to the hotel, she had already posted it on her Facebook and Josh knew!
We picked up Jossie, Efrat and kids (and Yona and David) and went to Sushi Samba for dinner; ate outside. A beautiful evening.
Today, we woke very early, had the most amazing breakfast and got on a bus that Mike had rented and took off for the Upper Galilee, with Yossie, Yona and a friend, Yohav and his wife, Orit(the owners of the wine store). We drove for over an hour, stopped at a lovely JNF park, and Yohav and Orit set up a picnic of champagne, bread, cheese, and chocolate rugelach that Margot stole from the hotel. Then ended up at a lovely winery that will produce about 1 million bottles of wine this year. Also tasted delicious chocolate, caramel, etc. dessert wines and bought 3 bottles to take home. We then went for lunch; they brought out course after course: eggplant, moussaka, grape leaves, hummus, tahini, barley and lentils, tomatoe salad with mint, peppers, pita, filled pasta, zucchini filled with beef, coffee, baklava. This restaurant is owned by Christian Lebanese , near Tiberias.
We then headed towards Haifa and visited a couple other small wineries. Never thought we'd ever want to eat or drink again...but we enjoyed vodka and watched the sun set and walked into town and ate shwarma. Ran into David and Yona.
There are 300 wineries in Israel but Israelis don't drink much wine, so that's a problem for the wineries (1.7 liters per person per year compared with 70 liters per person in Italy).
Also of interest is that Yossie's house cost close to $1 MILLION dollars; it is an ok house (By American standards). Our house here would be worth a fortune. My conclusion is that we have the best standard of life. No place is perfect, but we are blessed for sure.
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