Our first stop was in Tel Aviv where we saw some family and tried to stay awake until night time and sleep as best we could through the night. Unfortunately, Ari didn't like the idea of sleeping through the night, so instead we slept part of the night and then spent a few hours in bed all together watching DVDs on our laptops and singing quietly in the dark until hours later, we all finally fell asleep again. This might well be the first time we have had a family bed. Maybe the second, but either way, it's rare and very sweet.
The next day we spent in Jerusalem and I didn't remember to take any pictures, but my sister-in-law did, so I'll have to update a post later on with pictures and information about this day.
The third day was a relaxing day and my Grandma's 80th BDay and again, I will update with this because while I have some pictures from the professional photographer there,I know my SIL got some good shots and I want to wait to add them to the group.
This brings us to my first post. It is about our next day which was a trip up to Haifa located in Northern Israel along the coast about an hour to an hour and a half away from Tel Aviv. We went to Elijah's Cave which I, again, don't have pictures of, but to be honest, other than being neat because it is Elijah's cave, it was nothing to interesting. It was literally a tiny hole in the wall type of cave near the coast of the city. So we'll just skip any pictures of it. The next stop, though, after lunch, was the Baha'i Gardens. Here is the link to their website for information about the religion if you are interested in learning more. And below are all my pictures of the gardens themselves. They are truly impressive and beautiful!
My parents and my husband decided to head back with Ari after this, but my brother, SIL, and myself continued exploring Haifa. We walked around this beautiful sculpture garden and then took some cable cars up to a monastery. I don't really have any pictures of the monastery because it was really dark and somewhat unimpressive. The views were great and the ride up was fun. :) Keep your eyes open for a raccoon in the pictures. My SIL and some friends, taking a note from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, created a group the Sisterhood of the Traveling Roadie (raccon's name). When each of them takes a vacation they get to take Roadie with them and need to take pictures of him on his vacation. It was rather fun thinking up cool/funny places to put Roadie. I'm going to probably be stealing this idea for our kids when they get old enough to enjoy it. Make sure you take note of Roadie being used as a tennis ball between two sculptures. :)
Speaking of my SIL and brother, here is a beautiful pictures of them when we stopped to get something to drink. It was D*MN hot there! Hehe...
I'll post more about the trip soon. :) Organizing all these photos.
