Walkabout

Sometimes, days are longer than others. Today was two of those days.

After typing up all my quasi and queasy thoughts and posting them, I started my actual day. Maddie showed up at my sister and brother-in-law's house and we set off on an adventure.

We walked up Agrippas, slowly, as I tried to make sense of the world. Jet lag runs strong in this one so I was lagging behind and/or ahead. I don't even know. We looked at stores, compared memories, and just bonded. It was, in a word, really awesome. In two words it was great and in three, you get half an eggroll. We walked towards the old city, with a slight detour through the Mamila mall so we could sit at Cafe Rimon and get overcharged. I overcharged up with a double espresso and Maddie had a yogurt based fruit smoothie (strawberry and banana). Then we kept walking and got to the kotel, running into local friends along the way and ending up at the wall. I'm a huge fan. I probably take the same pictures every time I visit but you know what? Shut up. I'm gonna keep doing it. There were 9 or 10 minyanim going on at the same time, mostly Sephardi ones. Neat to watch. We tore ourselves away after some good soul searching (note to self, rename the emo genre "shoe gazer" to "sole searcher.") We headed back up to Ben Yehudah.

By now, it had been over 30 minutes since we ate so by The Tourists' Code, we had to eat again. By some strange coincidence, we happened to be right next to Moshikos! Whoda Thunk it? My first falafel there had too much schug on it and was too spicy. My second one balanced that by having no spice, but fries. Both were delicious! Maddie got a bagel with sweet potato and cream cheese from Sam Bagels. Gross but not ungross. We shopped up Ben Yehuda, looking for hats and then got a cab to Har Hamenuchot.

My dad is buried at Har Hamenuchot, and I'm a fan of my dad's so I wanted to stop off and say hi to him. We had some trouble finding the grave (the signage is just wrong) but eventually we found him and tears flowed. For real, but not his. Mine and Maddie's. The cab waited for us and took us back to N and D. I was losing it on the ride and knew I needed to collapse so when I got back, I snuggled myself up and took a 2+ hour nap. It helped. I still couldn't see straight but the angle was closer.

After the nap we discussed evening plans. Clearly they had to center around food. Maddie wanted to go to a friend's house and clean herself up and deliver a gift of popcorn (so not a thing -- gifts should be chocolate or higher on the the standard scale of gift, available at fine dining establishments near you). While we were out, we called N+D to decide on dinner plans. We ended on Greg's in Cinema City. Mad and I decided to walk and we ran into friends on the way, but we got there. I had a mushroom tortellini with a cream sauce. M had sweet potato soup as did David. There were also cauliflower tempura, brocolli cakes, salmon linguini, mozz sticks and who knows what else. All properly mediocre and over priced. I ate well.

Next up, a cab to visit Tasha and Zevi which was nice. I ate 2 rugelach. Then a cab back to N+D as I start to flag; after 16,000 jet lagged steps, I think I'm allowed. We have made plans for tomorrow, starting out with early morning coffee on Gan Sacher. Good something everyone.

P> -- if I missed you in my retelling or made mistakes, please have mercy. I'm sooooo tired. I haven't slept etc.