For those not familar with Israel, the work week starts on Sunday and finishes on Thursday. Friday is their equivalent of Saturday and Saturday, called Shabbat, is their religious day, equivalent to Sunday in the US. Inbar heads off to work early and Oren stays and helps me with logistics for my Israel travels later in the week. It is invaluable to have Oren work out the bus and train schedules/routes for me. Oren comes up with routings that are more efficient than the bus stations on-site are able to recomend. A couple of times I tried to buy tickets to locations and had the ticket vendors try to sell me something different. When they consulted their schedules, they would shake their heads in disbelief and sell me the tickets I asked for, knowing that in fact, I had the better routing. Thank you Oren!
Oren drops me at the Jordanian embassy where I get a visa for next week's travel. I chuckle at the embassy security check. They have a metal detector and ask me to empty my pockets onto the desk beside the metal detector before walking through. After walking through they ask me to take my stuff from the desk and put it back into my pockets. This is all fine but I'm surprised they don't examine the contents of my pockets and find my pocket knife...
Oren and I go for a bike ride along the Tel Aviv waterfront. It is a vibrant place with shops and restaurants all humming. The cycle is delightful - it is flat (knee-friendly), the pathway broad, more than twenty feet in most places, there is section designated for bikes and one for walking, but like most things in Israel, people ignore the signs and do what they like. Fortunately it is not crowded and we navigate easily to the Speedo restaurant where we stop for a beer and watch the sun set. It is idyllic. I forgot what fun cycling can be and vow to do this more frequently.
10:15PM, head off to dinner at the Nanuchka, a Georgian Restaurant Bar having great food, great drinks and which is very hip and trendy. Sunday evening is "Arab Night", and they play Arab music (a bit too loud, but never mind). The food is outstanding with our favorites being cheese momos, and meat chinkali, beef and goose stuffed in a breaded crust. Oren and I have something called a Georgian margharita, which is really a mohito on STEROIDS. Can you taste the mint over the internet??
The restaurant is divided into several rooms. There is a main room having a bar extending out into the room. The "business part" of the bar is wooden, two feet wide, fashioned in a U shape that extends eight feet into the room, runs for 15 feet down the middle of the room and then eight feet to the back wall. A couple of servers tend bar from the middle of the U and patrons outside the U lean against the wooden bar surface while consuming the libation of their choice.
Our table is in a room behind the bar but a large window hole is cut in the wall between the rooms and our table is raised and set against this hole along with high stools upon which we sit - so we have a comanding view of the entire bar area.
At 11PM on Arab night, a belly dancer usually stands on the bar and does her thing. Inbar has booked this table at this time knowing all this. We are in prime position! It is 11:15 and we have ordered a malabi dish and crepes for dessert. The hope is that the belly dancer appears before we are finished (they will seat people until 1AM!, some Tel Aviv restaurants seat until much much later)
11:30AM a hush comes over the crowd - "There she is!" hisses Inbar. The DJ starts a suitable track with a good beat and there before my eyes is a real live belly dancer. She is good!
The artist in me just enjoys the dancing. The engineer in me breaks down the motion into its constituent parts, the pelvic thrust, the hip twist, the jiggle, and the boob thrust. These are combined with looking around at people while smiling, making graceful wavy motions with her arms, ocassionally lowering her whole body very close to the bar surface - all done in synchronism with the pulsating beat of the music. Sound easy??? NOT
Dancer does a few numbers, steps down, and a 50-ish woman steps up from the audience and takes over. She doesn't have the fancy outfit and tassles like Dancer but she has most of the moves and has clearly been practicing. The crowd initially enjoys this but after a few numbers, they want her to step down. The DJ puts on a modern tune, figuring she will get the hint, but she adapts her dance style and keeps going, the crowd getting increasingly edgy.
She does one more before stepping down and letting Dancer back up into her rightful place on the bar. But wait, a tall thin male from the crowd joins her, and he also has the moves down too - the crowd loves it! He plays frequently to Dancer, dropping to his knees and extending his arms up to her, showing her off, so to speak. It's a fun memorable evening.
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