an unexpected day trip

After literally two straight days of heavy rain interspersed with hailstorms, thunder, and lightning, I was about to resign myself to another day of being stuck at home as much as possible to avoid conditions outside when the weather cleared (enough) by 10:30am today. So Daniel, Declan, and I ended up doing the usual Friday grocery run before the stores shut down for the weekend, and we finally visited Wadi Nisnas, the Arab/Christian neighborhood in Haifa close to downtown. There are a number of buses that go there, but we chose to ride on the Carmelit because of Declan's motion sickness issue, despite its lack of free transfer within 1.5 hour upon the first boarding that the Egged buses would have provided. The Carmelit is just a straight up-down travel route, and thankfully it worked out. Declan even munched on some Cheerios as the subway shuttled downhill.

Wandering around Wadi Nisnas (aka "mongoose valley" as translated from its Arabic name), it made me wish a little wistfully/hypothetically that I was childless still. And not pregnant. The mobility and extra energy would allow me to do more exploring, etc. There are so many nooks and crannies to poke around. Ah well.

I hope I'll have a chance to return and really get to know that area a lot better. Today we mostly walked along St John's Street. There are two butcher shops there that I might actually step into and buy something from in the future. The falafel store at the end of that street, George's, seems to be run by an Arab Christian family. It's really good, the restroom facility's nicely maintained, and the customer service is lovely. It seems that vendors--the good ones--don't like to sell their edible products until the customer has sampled a variety of their stock. Apparently there are two other famed falafel places in the neighborhood on Wadi Street that other people are loyal towards. I'd like to try and see the difference... It reminds me of Philadelphians' personal preferences about where to get their cheesesteak sandwiches.

We also bought Christmas lights and some tinsels to decorate the little Christmas tree that Or and Kirsten lent us. Since the Eastern Orthodox church doesn't celebrate Christmas until January 6, I figured it's worth the 100 shekels on these decorations for us to have the tree around until then.