Living the retirement dream

Monday February 19: What a wonderful day we had.  Several weeks ago our airbnb host Guy was giving us tips on what to do, where to eat and sights to see.  He suggested that we rent a car some day and drive to Mitzpe Ramon which is a town in the Negev desert of southern…

We have been in Israel over a month and have hardly been out of Tel Aviv.  There are centuries of history here just waiting to be explored and we are finally ready to head out looking for more adventure.  We sign up for a free tour billed as New Jerusalem Tour.  After an 8am sculling…

Saturday February 10: After our run along the Yarkon river today we head to the beach to watch Israeli folk dancing.  The dance sessions take place every Saturday at 11am rain or shine.  Most of the dancers look like they have been doing it for years and know the steps by heart.  We enjoyed standing…

After being up all night for the super bowl, we only go out to pick up hummus, eggplant, cauliflower and a salad for dinner.  The local staples of hummus msabbaha, shakshuka, salatim and falafel are so good and healthy that we keep going back for more.  We came here because of the Israeli food we…

You don’t have to spend a fortune to see Tel Aviv.  Luckily there are a number of free guided walking tours which can give you good inside information about things you might miss if just wandering the city by yourself.  Continuing our busy week, on Thursday morning we took advantage of this and walked to…

Sunday afternoon we received an email from a local guide, archeologist and big Israel lover whom we had contacted early on about a tour of Tel Aviv.  She did not respond to our initial email but instead had Moshe Frank contact us and he gave us our initial tour of TLV.  Apparently Dorit had heard…

When you retire, weekends tend to take on less significance as every day is like a weekend but in Israel weekends are a little different as many businesses will close early on Friday afternoon in preparation for Shabbat which runs from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday.  Even though Tel Aviv is a largely…

We had four days of good weather between our Shabat tour and the next set of stormy days.  We took two runs along the Yarkon river stopping at the Daniels Rowing Center both times, first to check on what they had available and the second time to sign up for our first sculling lesson. On…

Shabat, 20 January, we are picked up at 9:00 by a tour guide Moshe Frank.  We started in our neighborhood of Old North Tel Aviv and drove to the New North, a community of many modern mid-rise apartment buildings as well as the University of Tel Aviv and many museums.  We then headed south to…

Jim was first up this morning and was greeted by two bright green parrots perched on our balcony railing.  Unfortunately they were camera shy and flew away immediately.  Our first full day was mostly spent doing what Sandy refers to as “nesting”, in other words making the condo feel more homey and user friendly for…

On Saturday evening January 12 our daughter Jennifer drove us to Logan where we zipped through check-in and security and went immediately to the Business Class lounge to watch the Patriots playoff game.  While awaiting our flight we ran into a Lahey Colleague, Ophthalmologist Paul Cotran, who was on our flight to Istanbul but then…