Surprise Trip to the North

The kids didn't realize that when we left Netanya we turned North instead of South. They still didn't realize when we drove by Zichron Yaakov that we hadn't passed that on the way to the hotel. Zvi did say then that it meant that we were still at least an hour from school even though we had left much earlier. As we got closer to the north we showed them on a map where we were and they were very excited. The great thing about surprising them is that it's not so important that we actually do something fun because just the fact that we took them somewhere when they weren't expecting it makes it worthwhile for them. We did lots of fun things on this tiyul though.

We drove straight to Tzuk Minara. They had three really fun things to do there:
1. Toboggan - I'm not sure if this is the right term since that usually refers to going down on snow but there was no snow. We go on these little cars on tracks and go up some of the mountain before coming zooming down. I guess it was sort of like a roller coaster ride. Rivka went alone but Zvi and Leora weren't big enough so they had to come with me.


2. Trampoline - They tied the kids to ropes and then pressed a button and, voila the kids went flying. They had pictures of kids doing flips on these but my kids were satisfied just jumping really high. Just the three bigger kids did this.

3. Cable cars - We all went on the cable cars up to the top of the mountain and walked around up there and enjoyed the gorgeous view.


A lot of the stuff is closed since it's not high tourist season. The good thing about it not being high tourist season was there were no lines but the bad thing was that a lot of things were closed. They also have snappling, wall climbing, bouncy toys and omega but none of that was open. We still had fun doing what they did have.

After we finished we went to Metulla. We saw the Canada Center where Danny plays hockey. We also saw the Lebanon border and to Neot Mordechai so Shira could buy new shoes. Then we drove down to the East side of the Kinneret to a "tzimmer" - a little cabin - in Briza Bakfar in a yishuv called Ramot. We tried driving one way but the road was closed so we had to go all the way around and we passed a forest fire just as the fire trucks were getting there. It looked like they had gotten there early enough to get it under control since the fire wasn't near any houses or anything.

We got to our cabin after 6 and we were all starving. We went to a couple hotels but dinner there was really expensive and hardly seemed worth it. We couldn't find a Kosher restaurant nearby so the kids agreed to get dinner at the supermarket. We got small pizzas to make in the microwave and soup in cups and ice cream. It was good and the kids loved eating in front of the TV. The cabin was really nice and spacious with a beautiful view overlooking the Kinneret.