Vacation Day - Guess one thing we did!

Yossi and I spent a last vacation day together. First I got a haircut here in the neighborhood (comparable price and quality to what I get at home) since I had the time and my calendar for the next two weeks is filling quickly. I also downloaded some of the photos from my camera and got them organized. Around 10 Yossi picked me up and we went out for the day. We weren't sure what we'd end up doing. The only firm plan was an appointment at the Palmach Museum for 3:30 in the afternoon.

It's really hot here in the sun during the day, so it's really not great weather for just plain sightseeing or walking around and getting to know a new place. So, Yossi had heard from a mutual friend about a winery near the airport in the town of Yehud (Chilag; seriously, it was not my idea, for the first time). We called, they were open, so we went to check it out. We spent about 90 minutes there, much of it with the husband of the winemaker. Orna, the winemaker was out for the day. Her training is largely Italian, so the style of the wines is fairly unique for Israel - nice, but not exactly what I look for in a wine. She is very slow and deliberate with her wines, leaving them in the barrel for 2 or three years, then in the bottle for at least another year before she releases them - right now she is selling her 2005 wines. We tasted a 2007 Cabernet from the barrel that shows a lot of potential - It was too smoky for my taste, but time in the bottle later should temper that. We also tried a Merlot - again, not high on my list, a 2006 in the bottle that will improve with age, but I'm not rushing to buy any.

We got a recommendation for lunch in the neighborhood that ended up being traif, so on our way back to another place we'd already passed we met Yossi's friend Lynn who was going to the same restaurant. Lynn, who hosted the folk club we went to last week, is a member of Kibbutz Tzora and works at their furniture and scooter factory which relocated to Yehud after a fire at the Kibbutz a few years ago. We sat with Lynn and his friend Michael and had a very pleasant lunch (reminiscent of Rachmo in Jerusalem) of kabobs, rice and salads. It was a lot of food for 30 shekels.

We made our way to Ramat Aviv for the Palmach Museum. We first went into their photo archive which has hundreds of albumns (and something like 40,000 photos, all captioned, so someone has done dozens of years of work) of photos from the 1940s. An amazing amount of material. The museum itself is run by the Defense Ministry, and its more of a simulation of what it was like to be in the Palmach (Pre-State Israel's premier strike force) At its height it had over 7000 soldiers, of whom over 1000 died before it was disbanded and absorbed within the IDF in 1949. The museum is a continuous film in a variety of rooms with actors playing the parts of actual members of the Palmach, and shows their lives from 1941 to 1949. It is a very well done presentation. It takes 90 minutes, costs 30 shekels, and its well worth it.

After returning to Jerusalem (too full for dinner) Yossi went home and I started packing (harder than it sounds). Wednesday I am finishing the packing, doing some last minute phone calling and cleaning up my space before I vacate it. Tonight is the wine festival. It may be a couple of days before I have a chance to post an entry of what that's like. I fly in about 16 hours.