Friday at the market is nuts. Especially when it gets to be late in the afternoon. The people selling their goods start to mark things to half price because they know that everyone is about to shut down for Shabbat and head home. This was a mob scene. Everyone was there for a reason, either to get their much needed bread for their Shabbat dinner, Kosher of course, a basket of figs, dates, some sort of meat??, cheese and lots of it and free samples, fish, spices by the moundful, wine...yes, wine. That was the reson we were there. We wanted to buy Joe and Orit, our hosts for Shabbat dinner a nice bottle of wine. Our driver dropped us off in what was like Times Square gone Kosher minus any skyscrapers...just the massive amounts of people. Whoever thought that bringing a baby stroller here was a good idea...lots of people! Crazy me... I thought I could handle crowds. We have been in plenty of hot smelly fish markets around the world but this place was different. The free samples?? I don't know but the old ladies pulling shopping carts over your feet to try to get to their next destination for some tomatoes...oh my goodness. And...it went in all directions. It was a perfect spot to film a Jason Bourne movie because you could lose someone in there in a matter of seconds. We chose to walk down an area that had some overhead shade, much needed at the end of our touring day. We walked 30 feet straight tunred left, walked 40 feet turned right and all I could hear from Kathleen and Nick was "Mom, we are never going to find a place that sells wine in here"...then like an angel from the Lord was sent telling us to go right and there it was! A wine and cheese shop. We managed to squeeze into the stall and over the cries in many languages of people sampling cheese we were able to get the attention of one of the shop owners. We told him what we wanted and he sold us a $180 S bottle of wine. Not dollars, Israeli money about a $50 dollar bottle of red wine from a local winery, sounded good to us so we paid and then tried to enjoy the market for other treasures. Then, I came out of the fog...we were hot, being mauled by other people that knew what they were doing and all of a sudden reality set in...we wanted back in our air-conditioned van! Our guide, Zvika had given us an Israeli cell phone to use to call him for emergency purposes while we were in Israel. We considered this an emergency and used it! He had JUST found a parking spot, if this let's you understand the crazy parking situation there. He told us we were the first people he's taken there that found what they wanted and wanted to get out of there so fast. I did not know if that was good or bad. It was good for us because we had what we wanted, had a good day and were ready to go back to the hotel and prepare for our first ever Shabbat dinner in Israel. Actually, we had been to a Shabbat dinner in Atlanta in February so we kind of knew what to expect, we thought!
The crowds
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