Israel & Egypt PT 1

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After doing that last blog entry, I am feeling kinda guilty about not putting up another amazing trip with the family. Our Israel & Egypt Trip. Of course I forgot my journal at my parents house with all the gooey details, names & stories of all the places we went, but I am going to wing it and at least you will get to see the amazing photographs. Or, maybe not amazing pictures per-say (Evan didn't get to go on this trip) but you will get to see the experience that we had via my ok pictures haha. I cannot remember the exact order of events even though I have been trying for a few days now.. but whatever

So Part 1 is ISRAEL.

The Cohen Family, including Smadar (my dad's sister) embarked on a two week journey starting in Israel and ending in Egypt (This was Dec 20 - Jan 3) so we were in Egypt before all the craziness. There are a lot of reasons WHY we did this journey all of which I will not share, but the most important was that my grandmother (my Dad & Smadars Mother, Rachel Kaplan) passed away about 10 months ago, her cousin Dedi Feigin's (but more like a brother) son Uri Feigin was getting married and my grandmother would have wanted us ALL to go. SO... WE DID.

We arrived in Tel Aviv in early pm on the 20 where we moved into our condo 3 blocks from the beach & were joined by the family for dinner at a delicious middle eastern restaurant. We were in the middle east for heavens sake. My brother and dad would tell you it was the best lamb chops they had all trip but tried restlessly to find better ones. The next day we woke up early and had a very busy day where we drove from Tel Aviv up to Jerusalem, walked around the old city, spent hours at the holocaust museum, hung out with our cousin Alan Caplan, ate more food, really enjoyed ourselves & on once we got back into Tel Aviv, we then went over to Ordits house for coffee & tea and schmoozing. We spent one whole day driving around up north and the golan with an over flowing car load of people. We drove through Arab towns, right near the borders of Lebanon & Jordan & Syria. To end of this day we went to the cemetery where my great grandfather & grandmother (my grandma's parents were buried). My Great Grandfather was Benjamin Bichman and he was in the bi'chai (sp?) and was an absolute badass in his time. Many stories from here but not going to write them all. It was a pretty emotional time, but we are all glad that we took that trip. The day of the wedding we spent hours at this huge farmers market, with all sorts of crazy things -- we ate and ate and ate these delicious falafel balls & drank delicious fresh pomegranate juice. It is so freaking good. It took about 6 poms to make a full glass of juice so tart and great. The wedding was about 45 minutes away in a large indoor orchard, it didn't even start till after 7pm. Its hard to explain how it was set up but you will see in the pictures. All glass around it, wood floors tables set up all around, and then the ceremony actually happened on the dance floor. There were about 30 seats for the older guests and everyone else stood around. Short and sweet and to the point. Truly beautiful. OH what I forgot to tell you was it was a 500 person wedding, and this is considered AVERAGE for Israeli weddings. WHOA! Anyways we get there at 7ish there are appitizers, open bar & photos being taken around 8 the wedding happened, around 830 as soon as the ceremony ended it was a full blown dance party until 4 am. YEA they know how to do it.

The whole next day, I nursed my hangover by laying on the beach all day. hahah
We did a bunch more family time but after 6 days said our "to be continued" and headed off to Egypt.

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Comments

[Bertie]

better late than never!!
Cool Ray. Once again, a great blog. xoxox