Wednesday, July 4

I clipped a bus today. Just a tiny bit. There is a little scratch on the side view mirror, hardly noticeable. The bus driver yelled at me. The check out lady at Supersol Deals (the equivalent of Sam’s Club) yelled at me too. A woman yelled at Noah in the Supersol justifiably, he was pushing the cart around a corner too fast, and a six pack of 1.5 liter bottles flew off the bottom of the cart and hit her in the leg.

Other highlights of the day had a naval theme. We drove to Haifa (the train turned out to be too much of a hassle) and went to the National Maritime Museum and the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum. The former was pretty dry and filled with screaming campers (Naomi was mistaken as one of them by a madrich and herded to the group). They had many model ships on display, strangely enough they also had bios of the people who built the models. On display were some very cool very old maps, and some ancient relics from the sea. They also had an exhibit on pirates. We made it there for about 45 minutes and then headed next door to the much more interesting clandestine naval museum. This museum is the equivalent of Latrune for ships, and with shade. In the back lots of old boats, boat missiles, torpedoes, and boat guns, and even a mock up a sub control room complete with working periscope are on display; you can climb on almost everything. The also have on display a boat that carried ma’apilim, and a movie about the ma’apilim that we could not stay to watch. Inside they have various artifacts from the navy and stories of many battles at sea. We were very impressed by the resourcefulness of the navy – they reused parts of ships that they had captured to build new ships, recycled missiles, etc.

Then we tried unsuccessfully to get lunch in Haifa (that’s when I clipped the bus). We wound up driving down to Caesarea to visit Eitan’s favorite ruins at eat at the beautiful restaurant in Old Caesarea where we ate the first day of our trip. On the way to Caesarea we had a brief detour near Atlit – we saw a castle like ruin from the road, protruding out into the sea, and tried to drive to it but wound up at a military base. So we left that ruin unexplored.

We then had our next great adventure at the Supersol Deals, which is an equivalent to Sam’s Club. We bought lots of hard salami and dried meat to bring home – it is so much cheaper here – as well as teddy bear and dino shaped chicken nuggets and our favorite yogurts. And we made it out alive.

We decided to have ice cream for dinner at this delicious looking ice cream place in the kikar, Tony’s Ice. Noah and Eitan had shwarma for dessert, and then all the kids had corn on the cob for an after dinner treat. We bought the corn from the corn man on the street and I was shocked to find that the corn was 7 shekels each. So I paid 7 bucks for corn that would have cost one dollar at home. But with the savings on the salami, I think we still broke even.

I am appreciating our home base in Netanya more and more each day. Not only is it well situated geographically, it is also so kid friendly. The rides and activities and food in the kikar are all just a short walk away and in a relatively contained area that gives the kids lots of room to run and explore and be independent. Noah and Eitan feel totally comfortable going to buy shwarma by themselves, the kids go into the makolet to get their own drinks, they can walk around on their own. despite the traffic and grime, this was definitely a good choice.