lovely discoveries

It's been a bit of a downer Christmas this year given that Daniel got really sick/chose this week to go through coffee detox aka caffeine withdrawal. So my original plan to try a Chinese restaurant (of mixed reviews) in the German Colony and walk around afterwards checking out the Christmas lights around there on Christmas Eve/night was no longer possible. However, we still got to continue the Jewish-American tradition of celebrating Christmas i.e. eat at an Asian dining establishment. In this case, a sushi bar called Japanika that I had been curious about whenever we pass by it while strolling after dinner around Merkaz HaCarmel.

And! Because of Declan's severe motion sickness on local buses here due to the curvy, windy terrain of Haifa, we mostly constrain our travel plans with him to the Carmelit. Needing to return some overdue English children's books we'd checked out in Hadar, we stumbled our way around the area after getting off at the Solel Boneh station--and came upon the long-heard-about Oriental market, East/West, as well as the staircase entrance to the part of Wadi Nisnas in which the Holiday of Holidays Festival is held during the weekends of this month--an event I'd failed in my mission to locate the last time we traipsed down there. Most importantly, we also found that the Haifa Children's Library is in fact possible to walk to from the Carmelit. In fact, a closer station would have been the Hanevi'im stop. And! As we were walking towards the library, after checking out East/West, we also came upon the spice store and butcher shop opposite it that I've heard other expats recommend in FB groups.

I'm quite happy with these discoveries, as they'd been on my list of "getting to really know Haifa" for a while now. East/West was a bit anticlimactic... Sure, it's nice to know where I could get shrimp and other non-kosher seafood, but I don't think I'll shop there due to sanitary reasons apart from the staples of Asian seasoning (soy sauce, mirin, etc). I'm ecstatic to know that the Carmelit is a reasonable mode of transportation to get to the library. This is huge for Declan's benefit.

The librarians are so nice at the library... I'll detail this later as it has to do with one aspect of Arab culture that I truly appreciate. And now I need to finish making lunch for the family so we won't be late in catching the train afterwards to pick up Daniel's mom from Ben Gurion Airport.