Friday, April 6, 2007

Life's a Beach

We're all still on Passover vacation, so we took advantage of it and had a terrific picnic on the beach with some good friends. The kids ran and played in and out of the water all day. The water was still a bit cold for the adults (bar Jay, who's practically a member of the polar bear club). I admit that we're spoiled here in Tel Aviv, though. By the end of the summer swimming in the Mediterranean is a lot like swimming in a bathtub, and I love it.

We've apparently gone native, too. We had 8 adults, 7 kids, and a folding table literally groaning under the weight of all the food we brought. All that was missing was a folding picnic table with an umbrella and built in benches, and a small coal-fired hibachi, called a "mangal" here (no fires allowed on this beach). All summer long, heck, all year long, you see potbellied men bent over these little grills frantically waving a piece of cardboard back and forth in an effort to make the grill cook faster. It gets pretty comical at times. A year or so ago some company actually started selling plastic "fans" designed for just this purpose. It's amazing what kind of crap you can sell to people sometimes...

We finished out our day with drinks and Mexican food at a favorite pub (hamburgers and fries for the kids). It just doesn't get much better.

Sorry, no pictures though. We were too busy having fun to take any.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sounds like a perfect vacation day to me!
I'm sure watching those old men frantically fanning their fires would look very comical! :)
To make a perfect end to perfect day, you were the winner of my Blog Anniversary give away for the day! Congratulations.

Robin said...

How fun! Off to go check it out now.