Surprise Vacation to Eilat

We've been telling our kids all year that we would go to Eilat at some point this year. We thought that this week would be a great week to get away since I was off on Tuesday anyway and I had to use up my 2007 vacation days. Then we started looking into prices for hotels and everything was really expensive (at least 250 dollars a night) so we told the kids that we weren't sure if we were going to go at all. The kids were sure when they went to sleep on Sunday night that they'd wake up in the morning with an email telling them we were going to Eilat. They were very disappointed that there was no such email and gave us a lot of trouble going to school in the morning.

After Shira exercised and I ran a couple errands we started doing some serious research for our vacation. People had advised us to try daka90 for cheap deals on hotels. We'd been there a couple times but didn't really find anything that was good. We tried again and found a good deal at the Isrotel Riviera. We got a suite for the entire family for about 100 dollars a night. We quickly packed up food, clothes, a toaster oven and popcorn popper and went out to pick the kids up from school. They were all surprised and thrilled.

The drive down is beautiful but a little scary at times. We decided that there was no way we were going to do the drive at night coming home. At one point we almost ran out of gas but after the tank was on empty for 10 minutes or so we found a gas station. It took us about four hours to get to Eilat. We had no idea what we were going to do while we were there but we were all exhausted anyway. The hotel was nice and the room was exactly what we needed. (At one point I turned to Rivka and said, "Isn't this hotel awesome?" She said, "Yeah, but I don't think Mommy likes it so much." It wasn't fancy or anything, the rooms weren't carpeted, and it was a little crowded with six people in the suite but it was definitely good enough for us.) The kids watched some videos that we brought and we all went to sleep soon after we got there.

For a little while all four kids were sleeping one room but around 4 AM Yeshaya woke up and cried. We got him and he came into our room and we went right back to sleep. Apparently Rivka and Zvi did not. They had a door from their room that led straight outside to the swimming pool. It was pretty cold there at night but that didn't stop them from coming up with the brilliant idea of going in the pool in the middle of the night. They thought it wouldn't be dangerous if they just went in the shallow end so they went in the pool and then came back inside and got dressed. We did wake up eventually and heard them giggling so we told them to go to sleep. They did but told us about their little adventure in the morning. Needless to say we weren't too pleased. They had fun though and promised us they wouldn't do anything like that again.

To be continued ... (including lots of pictures)