In the car: Tel Aviv to Haifa

I awoke pretty early, and slipped out in order to allow Lily to sleep undisturbed, and walked to the lobby and then to the outdoor pool deck which was empty in the early hour. The sun was up but traffic was light because of the shabbat, which didn't end until sundown. Basically, we'd arrived in Israel on the weekend.

After getting Lily up, we headed to the conference room where the hotel's huge breakfast buffet was set up. This was our first look at an Israeli breakfast, and I was mightily impressed. Some of the items: bulgarian cheese, salt cheese, all kinds of jams and condiments, breads, yoghurt, tahini, hummus ... The main rule regarding kosher food is that meat and dairy do not mix. So, since Israeli breakfasts include a lot of yogurt, cheese, milk for coffee, etc., there is no meat. There is fish, pickled herring, for example, and another kind of herring which tastes oddly like cheese. The breakfast buffet was the length of a railroad car, it seemed, with many non breakfast staples such as olives and pickles. Through the course of the trip, I settled on sliced cucumbers, sliced tomatoes, a small omelette, toast, perhaps some herring or pickles, and coffee as my favorite breakfast staple.

In order to prove to Lily my openness to new concepts, I selected a sliced lemon in olive oil and whole tinned sardines as a second course. The sardines were OK, although the heads were a little crunchy, but the lemon didn't work for me. Lily was unimpressed but did get some entertainment from my reaction to the lemon.

A little bit about our car:
One challenge we faced was the security system built in to the car. Basically, you turn the key to "on" but not start, then turn it back to "off" ... press a little button on the key chain, then turn the key back and start the engine. If you missed a step, the car shut down and would not start. A couple of times we would start the car by waiting a while or by getting out of the car and walking around it a few times. But in Haifa that strategy eventually failed and we were forced to call Budget -- which meant figuring out the right number of zeros to put in front of the number we had, which led to getting the hotel guy to call Budget on our behalf. We learned the secret: you turn the key back to "start" back off one click, press the button three times, turn the car off, then start it up. I got to the point where I feared starting the car lest it resulted in another call to Budget. However by the time we'd driven the length of Israel we'd manage to get the best of the Huyndai security scheme.

Our "Getz" is pictured here, with Lily:

We started the car, pulled out into the main road and headed North following the signs to Haifa and Netanya. Soon we were speeding along a four-lane freeway. My goal was to make a stop at Caesarea, about halfway to Haifa. Looking back, there wasn't too much to see at this old Roman port on the Mediterranean, which was the seat of government for King Herod. We stayed about an hour and were on our way.

It took a little searching to find the highway, which at this point was a two-lane road. As we drove north past farms and industrial sites I realized we were on a road paralleling the highway we'd taken from Tel Aviv.

We had a reservation at the Port Inn, located on Jaffa Road in the Port District of Haifa. It took a while to find some sort of landmark, pull over and call on our cell phone, and get specific directions. At one point we'd found Jaffa Road, but it was one way and past the hotel entrance. But after circling around we were flagged down by the hotel manager and directed to a small courtyard to park.