Picspam: last weekend I happened by the coast
Soooo last week loneraven & partner were in Israel! Which was so delightful, and I'm so glad I got a chance to meet them. I enjoy traveling, and I enjoy showing people around and seeing places I know from a fresh point of view, and all of my experiences with meeting people from online have been so comfortable and I love it. And I've gotten to meet so many people who visited from abroad this year -- thecityofdis and harriet_vane and now loneraven and they were all so wonderful (and not interchangeable like I'm making it seem that they are) -- and now there is no one new on the horizon and nothing to look forward to :(
But I will focus on the good parts. Some photos from last weekend, 1-2 borderline NSFW:
We started at the port (with
marina too), walked all the way down the promenade to the beach and back up. It was a great day for going to the beach and honestly, I could have stayed there all day (except: jellyfish! They were still here last week, just a little bit.)
"I'm a beach, not a giant ashtray, okay?"
...sometimes Israelis need snarky interactive signs to get the point.
I took no photos of Nahalat Binyamin, where we saw the crafts stands and had lunch -- but after that we drove up north, stopping on the way at the cliffs by Gaash:
They are the prettiest cliffs! I was pointing out the shore at the bottom of the cliffs, explaining about how there's an undeclared beach down there and I have no idea how to get there. This is how the explanation went:
"...and yeah, I have no idea how to get there but sometimes you can spot people there like hey, right now, seewhoa are those people NAKED."
And then I stalkerazzi'd the nude bathers and my excuse for posting is that all of the photos are far enough away so as not to be recognizable and if people don't want to be photographed they should not get naked in public, um.
I call this one Fassy Rises From the Water. (JUST GO WITH IT.)
They were like nymphs! Or mermaids. I was pretty captivated.
Spot the tiny head bobbing in the water! This is so dangerous, seriously, going this deep without a lifeguard. They're lucky we were there to watch over them, really.
We were too early to catch the sunset, unfortunately, though we did see a pretty sunset on the shore-adjacent drive north (as I rambled to
loneraven about Bandom. And I didn't even get to MCR.)
There was also this crazy athlete guy working out on the promenade at the top of the cliff, doing all these manly pushups and then all of a sudden transforming into a bendy yoga dude:
It was pretty impressive.
Okay, so THEN. Then we got to Haifa and met nogah and tieleen for dinner at a Chinese restaurant! It was awesome. We got the best fried banana for dessert, guys.
When I sliced off the tip,
nogah said "Mazal tov". It was amazing. (Well, except for shimgray, who just looked a little ill and passed. I don't blame him.)
After dinner we took a stroll up and down the Louis promenade -- or boardwalk -- or walkway -- and that was lovely too, cool(-er) evening air and a breathtaking view of the Haifa bay:
We went as far as the (closed, locked) Bahai Temple before turning back.
The Temple by night.
And that was last Friday! It was long and full and I made it home without crashing the car.
The next day I went to a friend's birthday in the evening. She was having a poyke (originally potjie, or potjiekos in Afrikaans) at the beach, which is when you dump a bunch of ingredients (chicken, vegetables, any combination of sauces and seasoning you can find in your pantry) in a cauldron over a bonfire and let it cook for a couple of hours. It's become pretty popular here in the past 10-20 years, for cooking at bonfires.
The advantage of making it at the beach: beautiful sunset. The disadvantage, which no one had thought of in advance: the epic plague of mosquitoes that descended with twilight D: I wrapped myself in a towel to try and defend myself, but checking the damage the next day, I discovered 18 mosquito bites -- just on my right arm. Le sigh. I was a good girl and didn't scratch and you mostly can't even see them now. Let us instead move on to the good parts: sunset :D
This is the part I hate, because no matter how many direct photos I've tried to take of the sun here and in the past, I've never managed to get the colors right, and it drives me crazy. Imagine a deep, fiery red.
Like, RED red. It's pretty beautiful. Even without the colors, though (sigh!), I like this shot. I always love that moment where it doesn't look like the sun's going down, but like the earth is spinning up.
And here is the star of the evening: the poyke pot.
I will confess that the dish did not, eventually, taste that good, and that the evening ended with me driving up to Tel Aviv to try to get to the enormous protest but being unable to squeeze in anywhere and eventually returning home disappointed, so it was not the most amazing evening ever.
Two days later I met loneraven and shimgray in Tel Aviv again and we sat by the waves and under the stars and saw the International Space Station cut across the sky, and then I liked Tel Aviv again.
comments on Dreamwidth.
But I will focus on the good parts. Some photos from last weekend, 1-2 borderline NSFW:
We started at the port (with
marina too), walked all the way down the promenade to the beach and back up. It was a great day for going to the beach and honestly, I could have stayed there all day (except: jellyfish! They were still here last week, just a little bit.)
"I'm a beach, not a giant ashtray, okay?"
...sometimes Israelis need snarky interactive signs to get the point.
I took no photos of Nahalat Binyamin, where we saw the crafts stands and had lunch -- but after that we drove up north, stopping on the way at the cliffs by Gaash:
They are the prettiest cliffs! I was pointing out the shore at the bottom of the cliffs, explaining about how there's an undeclared beach down there and I have no idea how to get there. This is how the explanation went:
"...and yeah, I have no idea how to get there but sometimes you can spot people there like hey, right now, seewhoa are those people NAKED."
And then I stalkerazzi'd the nude bathers and my excuse for posting is that all of the photos are far enough away so as not to be recognizable and if people don't want to be photographed they should not get naked in public, um.
I call this one Fassy Rises From the Water. (JUST GO WITH IT.)
They were like nymphs! Or mermaids. I was pretty captivated.
Spot the tiny head bobbing in the water! This is so dangerous, seriously, going this deep without a lifeguard. They're lucky we were there to watch over them, really.
We were too early to catch the sunset, unfortunately, though we did see a pretty sunset on the shore-adjacent drive north (as I rambled to
loneraven about Bandom. And I didn't even get to MCR.)
There was also this crazy athlete guy working out on the promenade at the top of the cliff, doing all these manly pushups and then all of a sudden transforming into a bendy yoga dude:
It was pretty impressive.
Okay, so THEN. Then we got to Haifa and met nogah and tieleen for dinner at a Chinese restaurant! It was awesome. We got the best fried banana for dessert, guys.
When I sliced off the tip,
nogah said "Mazal tov". It was amazing. (Well, except for shimgray, who just looked a little ill and passed. I don't blame him.)
After dinner we took a stroll up and down the Louis promenade -- or boardwalk -- or walkway -- and that was lovely too, cool(-er) evening air and a breathtaking view of the Haifa bay:
We went as far as the (closed, locked) Bahai Temple before turning back.
The Temple by night.
And that was last Friday! It was long and full and I made it home without crashing the car.
The next day I went to a friend's birthday in the evening. She was having a poyke (originally potjie, or potjiekos in Afrikaans) at the beach, which is when you dump a bunch of ingredients (chicken, vegetables, any combination of sauces and seasoning you can find in your pantry) in a cauldron over a bonfire and let it cook for a couple of hours. It's become pretty popular here in the past 10-20 years, for cooking at bonfires.
The advantage of making it at the beach: beautiful sunset. The disadvantage, which no one had thought of in advance: the epic plague of mosquitoes that descended with twilight D: I wrapped myself in a towel to try and defend myself, but checking the damage the next day, I discovered 18 mosquito bites -- just on my right arm. Le sigh. I was a good girl and didn't scratch and you mostly can't even see them now. Let us instead move on to the good parts: sunset :D
This is the part I hate, because no matter how many direct photos I've tried to take of the sun here and in the past, I've never managed to get the colors right, and it drives me crazy. Imagine a deep, fiery red.
Like, RED red. It's pretty beautiful. Even without the colors, though (sigh!), I like this shot. I always love that moment where it doesn't look like the sun's going down, but like the earth is spinning up.
And here is the star of the evening: the poyke pot.
I will confess that the dish did not, eventually, taste that good, and that the evening ended with me driving up to Tel Aviv to try to get to the enormous protest but being unable to squeeze in anywhere and eventually returning home disappointed, so it was not the most amazing evening ever.
Two days later I met loneraven and shimgray in Tel Aviv again and we sat by the waves and under the stars and saw the International Space Station cut across the sky, and then I liked Tel Aviv again.
comments on Dreamwidth.