The magical food of Jerusalem

I am in Jerusalem once a week and I absolutely love it so it was a real treat to be able to spend 3 days there with my Mum.  Now, it wouldn't be a real Mona blog if I didn't of course dedicate at least one post to the amazing food we ate.  I promise, I'll try to be brief.

Kadosh - this Patisserie has been around since 1967 and it is a real establishment in Jerusalem.  It's very European with outdoor seating and ridiculously squished seating indoors but it's kosher so only has dairy items on the menu.  The food though is amazing! I ate their twice when I was in Jerusalem with Andrew and I honestly could have eaten every meal there with Mum.  However we only visited once for lunch and Mum had the salmon bruschetta and I had the mushroom-cheese lasagna.  We also grabbed a few sufganiyot for the road, one of them being halva flavoured with all being utterly divine!

Mouselline Ice Cream Parlour - I am a big fan of reading the blogs and my fav "blog" to read when I'm travelling is Tripadvisor.  #1 on Tripadvisor for Jerusalem food is Mousseline, a gelato / ice cream place located in the shuk that uses ingredients from the shuk.  The flavours they offer are amazing: wasabi and black sesame that were obvs Asian inspired (<3), grapefruit and basil (which Mum had and loved) and all your standard fruit flavours like sour cherry (which I had), raspberry, lemon and mango.  Heavenly is the only way to describe their ice cream.

Josef Burger Bar - although Mum and I didn't visit Josef's when we were there, I visited it a week before she visited and it is defs worth a mention.  Josef is again, located right near the shuk and they make their burgers from meat sourced at the shuk.  You pick your size (i.e. weight of meat), sauces (from an array of options including soy based garlic mayo) and whether you want fries (obvi).  The burger I had was amazing.  I would defs put it in my list of top burgers in Israel.

 

 

MM x

Driving to the Dead Sea and beyond

The next stop on our grand Israeli adventure was the Dead Sea.  Because public transport to the Dead Sea is basically non-existent, we decided to rent a car, drive on the wrong side of the road and attempt to make it to the Dead Sea and then Eilat (another 250km south) in one day and one piece.

Bamba - the perfect road trip snack

A few words about Israeli drivers:

1. The speed limit is a recommendation and in 99% of cases, is not followed.  One cute example from today, of which there are many, was when I was only going 10km over the speed limit and a friendly 4WD got up as close as he could and flashed his high beams to remind me I wasn't going fast enough... How thoughtful.
2. High beams are your night driving lights.
3. Indicators - unnecessary at all times.  In fact, cars don't even need them.  You should have seen the rental car guy's face when we asked him to point out which side the switch was for the indicators.  It was like we told him kosher meant you could eat meat and cheese together.
4. Do what you want whenever you want and however you want.  I have never never never in my whole entire life concentrated as much on a drive as I did today.  Cars were coming at me left, right and centre.  No indicating, speeding, in the middle of lanes.  You name it, I saw it.  But we got here in one piece and that's all that matters.

So, we made it to the Dead Sea in one piece.  I YOLO'ed the hell out of the situation and recreated that famous photo of the person reading the paper (mine was Russian as that's all Mum had on hand) while floating in the Dead Sea. 

For those geography buffs out there, the Dead Sea is smack bang in the middle of Israel and Jordan.  When you drive beside it, the opposite bank of the Sea is Jordan.  It's pretty cool.  Jordanian radio was also a bit alright as they played songs that someone somewhere could call top 40, as opposed to all the talking (yelling) in Hebrew or Arabic on all the other channels.  It made me giggle every time our favourite station described itself as the Kingdom's #1 radio station. 

Post our Dead Sea fun, we started our 3 hour drive to Eilat (still on the wrong side of the road).  I am a fairly huge fan of road trips and this one was amazing.  The scenery moved from rocky to sandy to mountainy to slightly more rocky to barren to even more barren to gorgeous sunset over barren to the resort town of Eilat (think Gold Coast meets Las Vegas minus a million because it's Israel) ((also apologies for the photos, I was busy driving so Mum was in charge of that part and she is still obvs in training)).

Dimona is where Israel makes its nuclear weapons

Bloody beautiful mate

For dinner we went to the most amazing restaurant but I will save that for another post!

Happy third night of Hanukkah.

MM x

Things I love about Israel, a list

The next thing I love about Israel is its graffiti. 

Israel has a lot of graffiti.  It's everywhere; on buildings, on the street, on cars and on anywhere you can spray a little piece of beauty on a blank wall.  I love the graffitied streets of Melbourne and I love the graffiti in Israel.

Here are some amazing photos of the beautiful graffiti I get to see everyday:

MM x

Things I love about Israel, a list

The next instalment in my list is graffiti, specifically, the Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me-uman 'series'.  The phrase is graffitied all over Israel, with my favourite location being near the entrance to Jerusalem.  I get to see it every Tuesday on my way there.

As Wikipedia tells me, the phrase is a kabbalistic formula based on the four Hebrew letters of the name Nachman.  The phrase refers to the founder of the Breslov movement Rabbi Nachman, plus his burial place in Uman, Ukraine.  

Today, the phrase is used as a name and song by a small sect of Breslover Hasedim (i.e. ultra orthodox Jews who follow Rabbi Nachman) colloquially known as the Na Nachs.  This small sect is known for driving around Israel in vans plastered with Na Nach graffiti blasting trance music and wearing the words of the phrase on large white crocheted kippahs (the video below will explain it all and I urge you to watch it (start past 1:00 min). Even though it's a little odd it will defs make you giggle.  

Legend goes that if you see 7 in one day you get good luck so I am always on the hunt.  

Here's a few I saw a few Tuesday's ago in Rishon and Jerusalem.  They are legit everywhere:


MM x

Things I love about Israel, a list

So, I want to start a list of things I love about Israel. Predominantly so I can brag about all the awesome things we have here, but also so when times get tough, I can look back and be like heyyyy butthead, this place is awesome so stop being a whinger.

Today's addition is Cofix.  

Cofix is a beast.  It entered the coffee / cafe market with the pure intention of ruining every other coffee / cafe place out there because it sells everything at 5 shekels (approx $1.50 AUD).  



That's right folks, you can get a soy coffee, half a sandwich, a cup of noodles, an ice-cream, a can of coke, a pastry, a carrot juice and basically any type of snack or drink that will satisfy your hunger for $1.50.  Talk about genius!!

Anyways, I am a true Aroma fan (the best coffee chain in Israel) but in terms of Jewness and me trying to save my hard-earned lawyer savings, Cofix is a true gift and one of the things I love about Israel.  (My internet research also tells me that shortly after Cofix opened in Tel Aviv, Aroma slashed it's coffee price to 8 shekels so even more reason to love Cofix!)

MM x