Shabbat on the Beach

For Erev Shabbat this week we went with Donna's aunt, uncle, and cousins to a popular beach near Herzliyah, where we found hoards of people and minimal parking spaces. The name of the restaurant there loosely translates to "Edge of the Cliff," and they serve all sorts of the usual Israeli fare plus a few less traditional delicacies (i.e. shrimp, calamari, and ham & cheese sandwiches).

After a quiet morning in Rehovot spent poring over the crossword and Tchaikovsky music (guess who did what), we are planning to visit Donna's cousin Lital and her new baby Ben, who live north of Tel Aviv. Tonight we go back to Jerusalem to drop me off and so Donna can return to Rehovot on Sunday with Savta's car and begin her opera program on Monday morning. It will be sad to be apart for most of the next four weeks (we hope to spend Shabbats together), but it will also be good for me to fly solo, especially since I'll have to anyway for the six weeks Donna spends stateside this August-September.

We suffered another loss in our latest battle with Israeli bureaucracy. Yesterday we went to the Bezeq (telephone company) office to pick up our DSL modem, only to be told that (1) there was no record of our order and (2) we had to have written permission from our landlord allowing us to obtain a DSL modem for use with her apartment's telephone line. Borrowing the neighbor's wireless connection is working for the time being, but I suspect I'll have to go legit sooner or later.