Happy Passover! I am lucky enough to have been able to sneak away from Edinburgh and come to Prague for a few days. While here, I promised myself that I would catch up on all the fun things I wanted to write about but lost the motivation for. That starts with the trip that I took to Israel in September of 2022.

I’ve wanted to visit Israel for years. I tried to do birthright when I was younger, but just never made it work, so when my parents were ready to come to visit me after a long pandemic, my dad suggested that we take my mom to Israel to celebrate her 65th birthday. I was totally on board with the idea, and my mom went to her trusty Insight Vacations and found an Israel/Palestine trip that was jam-packed with history and culture. We decided to meet in London and travel from there to Israel together, and it was the first time I got to be in the same room with my parents in more than a year.

Needless to say, I was a very happy Kim. We landed in Israel after midnight but had a a couple of days before the tour started to do as we pleased in Tel Aviv. We wandered along the beach to an outdoor market and enjoyed the sunshine and warm weather. The Shuk Hacarmel or Carmel Market is the largest outdoor market in Tel Aviv. According to Tourist Israel:

The Carmel Market first opened in 1920, some eleven years after the establishment of the city. It is an integral part of the history of Tel Aviv. Although much of the trade has now shifted to modern malls and the internet, the market is still immensely popular. Its narrow street is busy whenever you visit, particularly before Shabbat on Thursdays and Fridays, as residents buy supplies for their family meals. Recent years have seen a growing number of boutique stalls and food places opening alongside the traditional traders. They range from boutique beers to arrays of halva, and small eateries who take advantage of the market’s produce.

The Carmel Market is relatively simple in layout and location. The ‘Shuk’ occupies one street which runs south from the junction of King George Street, Allenby, and Sheinkin Street to the Carmelit Bus depot in the south. The side streets off of the market also host some small traders. The activity is not as spread out as in Jerusalem’s main market, Machane Yehuda.

https://www.touristisrael.com/carmel-market-tel-aviv/4433/

One of the best things about the first hotel was the rooftop pool. Summers in Scotland aren’t really known for their sunshine, so I am usually in desperate need of a tan (even now, I am appallingly white after a long harsh winter). We ended the first day in my favourite way…..getting tattooed. I can usually talk my mom into a tattoo, but this time I was able to talk my dad into not one, but two tattoos! I’ve been getting tattooed for 18 years and he has never been okay with it, but I was finally able to talk him into it, and now he has a cross and Star of David to represent his family. We went to Kipod Tattoo shop, and both got tattooed by Lera Torgovitsky. She was amazing! She’d done her time in the military, and when we saw her, she was getting ready to take her mom to a music festival in Sweden. I absolutely loved her, and so did my dad.

It has been months, and I still cannot believe that my dad actually got tattooed.