The day started with breakfast as usual, but today I decided to have a little coffee as well…
As I walked to work, it was interesting that some cars were patriotic with Israeli flags sticking out… It’s probably because of the holocaust memorial…
And some hang flags all the way down the building…
For the holocaust remembrance, at 10am there was a siren at 10am and people were to stand up for a couple of minutes. Unfortunately we were in the conference room and didn’t hear anything.
For lunch, I had goose,which was pretty good…
And Israeli salad…
Public transportation are not as convenient here so people typically don’t take the trains as much as, say cars, buses and taxis. We decided to take the Israeli train to Zikhron Ya’aqov, where one of our Israeli coworkers lived.
On the way to the train, we saw many military personnels getting off and heading home.
Then our train came…
and it was crowded today. Many people were reading on the train…
When we got off, on the fence of the train tracks was this logo of a fencing company…
It’s interesting that the logo shows a poor animal being fenced in.
Then we arrived at our friend’s place, where they had a nice view…
If you can see, to the right, there’s an arab city where they broadcast pretty loudly call to prayer 5 times a day.
We saw some memorial with an interesting Star of David…
Here are the street signs. Can you make out where to go?
Supposedly this city was created because of this winery…
The restaurants in Israel are very international. Here in this place lies an interesting restaurant…
Unfortunately when we got to our restaurant it was closed…
Seems like there’s also some Maternity place… is it maternity clothing? Or midwives? Not sure…
When we arrived at the restaurant, which had this interesting bar in the middle… I wasn’t sure if I was in a restaurant or the John…
Remodeling gone wrong? Anyway, so they asked us earlier what we wanted to eat, and I said anything but western stuff like Pasta. So guess what… we see a restaurant with sandwiches, pizza, and pasta!
Oh wait, wrong menu…
So here were was my coworker Jeff who lived in Israel, with his wife and daughter who’s 5 1/2.
And here’s myself and another coworker Neil who came with me…
First we had some pretty good bread…
As for the entree, it was between Salmon and Sea Bream. Sea Bream was delivered daily and Salmon… not so much. So guess what was the choice…
Now if you’ve been bored by some of the random snaps I did, here’s a little treat. While we were at Jeff’s place, we noticed there was this strange thing on the power panel…
Apparently on Shabbat they shouldn’t be turning on and off the light, but if the lights turn on and off by themselves, what can you do. So sometimes even TV and other things would be put on timer. This does pose a problem with cooking, so there are devices that continually heat up the items to eat on Shabbat. It’s also problematic for doctors, who need secular people to pick them on, and then they made an exception that they can get back from the hospital on their own.
Now here’s an interesting thing from their bathroom…
After that we took the train back…
Then we crossed the street and took a taxi back. Supposedly the cab drivers at the train station were less honest, and when we first got there a guy asked for 90 shakels and wanted us to sit in his cab, and then it was discounted to 70 shakels when we hesitated. I asked them to meter instead, and after a couple of cab drivers denied, the guy ended up taking us himself. The final price: 57 shakels, and in Israel taxi drivers don’t expect a tip.
So that was the third day. It was another day of work, but now it’s time to hit Friday and Shabbat, the weekend! Tomorrow will be when we need to squeeze all the sightseeing in, and Shabbat will be interesting because most of the country is shut down, while the rest of the country (non Jews) may operate. Let’s see what’s in store for us tomorrow!
