FW: Steinbergs in Israel - Gedera & Ein Gedi

Sat 28th - Shabbos at the Yacobinski's - yay!: We all went to the oldest Shul in the center of Gedera - about 120yo. It's an Ashkenazi shule and walked in at 10.15am - just as they were finishing Mussaf! Rabbi Cahn commiserated with us, as he had been for a few years in Perth and knew that we Australians wouldn't start Torah reading before 10.15! What can i say - we're slackers.
Dudu took us for a nice walk around the old streets of Gedera, culminating in a walk through a semi-private sculpture garden. Sculptures in every shape and form, welded, glued, attached from all sorts of junk, especially metals. Was great. Had a great big family lunch with Chen, Itai, Liron&Shaqed&Nadav, Mor&Yair&Elona, Shai, Osnat&Shai&Roni. I was given honour of kiddush again. A lovely afternoon with lots of food and drink(JWgold-yay!) and Lhasa's wine. That night we sat around watching TV (Israeli Survivor - hilarious but not very tznius).

Sun 29th - Drive to EinGedi (via J'lem): left about 11am and had a leisurely drive to ein gedi via J'lem. Stopped at the Kotel for a daven, the Cardo to replace a piece of jewellery, and Ir David to replace another piece of jewellery. Then drove on to Ein Gedi, staying at the Beth Sarah Guest house. It doubles as a youth hostel, but we were upgraded to 2 interconnecting rooms away from the young rabble. Not many options for dinner in Ein Gedi. We had dinner at the buffet in the guest house and we gorged ourselves on salads and meat and schnitzels and potatoes and drinks.

Mon 30th - Massada: after brekky in the dining hall with ALL the kids and the arabs and christians and non-denominationals we drove 17km south to Massada. Went up the cable car which freaked the kids out (in a good way) and then walked around the top for about 3hrs. The girls and i (bli R&H) walked down to the Northern Palace(i've never seen it before) which is a scary walk down the side of the mountain and culminated our tour with seeing the gigantic southern cistern which we were all too scared to walk into (my vertigo kicked in very swiftly, knees turned to jelly). Came down the cable car again with lots of squeals of excitement and then had a nice lunch there, which they didn't charge us much for because they were about to pack up(holiday tip ;-). We ate at about 3pm and had so much that we didn't eat dinner - when we got back to our rooms we showered off all the dust and went straight to bed.

Tues 1st Dec: Ein Gedi Reserve and Kibbutz:...... To follow...... (just eating dinner in the Kibbutz at the moment - wow and yum)

Latest update from the Steinbergs In Israel...
Web photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/steinbergpicasa
Blog online: http://steinbergsinisrael.blogspot.com
GoogleMaps Steinberg Israel Tour: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=101845790702321945414.00046ae3bb9b8c8d66f12
Skype Paul username: 'paulsteinberg'
Skype Steinberg Family username: 'prsteinberg'
Jerusalem address: 27 Narkis, Nahlaot.
Telephone: (03) 9015-9718 (local call in Australia)
Telephone: +972-(0)52-3396805 (in Israel)
Time: Melbourne Aust (AEST) minus -9 hours (e.g. Melb 10am=J'lem 1am)
------------------------------------------------------