I must admit I didn’t prepare for this trip the way I do for Japan. But I made up my mind to go about 10 days before and it took me three days to decide on a flight. So, relying on Yona, the fact that I’ve been here before and that I can read Hebrew, albeit slowly and painfully, I came without doing any planning. Not good.
Robin asked me to go to an exhibit in Haifa and Yona was busy with a grandchild so, complete with detailed instructions from her, I got on the bus and went to Haifa. I have spent a lot of time in Haifa but most of it was 45 or 50 years ago. I had just faint twinges of memory. And I neglected to carefully examine the notice, in Hebrew, about the exhibit.
Two buses and I was exactly at the place I needed to be. No one knew anything about it–not in English and not in Hebrew. No exhibit. Later we found out it won’t open until Sunday; maybe I’ll go back on Monday.
Plan B was a museum of Japanese Art–the only one in the Middle East and more or less walking distance. Of course that was on my list. The main exhibit was snow prints, which I could thoroughly enjoy in this land of sunshine. And they had Chushingura pictures by an artist I never heard of. I suspect this is just a spelling difference but I haven’t had a chance to look him up. If I could afford to collect Japanese prints, these are what I would get. This exhibit made me very happy.
Finally, tired and hungry, I stood in a bus stop and a taxi read my mind and pulled up. We had a good discussion about lunch places and he took me down to the port and I had lunch overlooking the Mediterranean.
Lunch is the big meal here; generally much more than I want to eat. It began with 15 small dishes, almost like salads: hummus, tahina, carrots with cumin, beets, pickled cabbage, egg salad, macaroni salad, some yummy but unidentified veggies and pita with butter and garlic. I never ordered an entree, and to hell with the diet.
Then I got on the wrong bus and had an unexpected tour of Haifa, finally getting back to Yona’s after the flaming red ball of the sun sank into the sea.