Evenings at Carmel Center

Talk about Haifa, the hill city, I had this huge mental block where in my husband's work place is near the beach, down hill and how are we going to manage staying up the hill ? I get dizzy when we ride on hills. The day we landed, we had an itinerary such that we landed in day light on a weekday and not on a Shabbat or weekend. As mentioned earlier, we took the train from Ben Gurion Airport to Hof-a-Carmel, the beach station in Haifa and a taxi drive to the hotel. We checked-in around 6pm and were still fresh enough to take a walk around. So, we did go out for a stroll and grabbed some quick dinner. That first walk, we got introduced to the surroundings.

Dan Panorama in the Carmel center has one of the most beautiful play parks and a zoological park situated right opposite to it. We were fortunate enough to have chosen this hotel for our initial stay. Advantages being a kitchenette in the room, a bus stop 100m away, the Gan HaEm park and many restaurants close-by. Well, what less can we expect from the center of the city ? Near the bus stop, there were plenty of stores, to name a few are the Shufersal Express , a famous falafel outlet At David's, a candy shop Chocolata, many banks and ATMs.  Dan Panorama has a small mall at the ground level which hosts a coffee shop, a pharmacy and a few garments, jewelery and electronics outlets. Even though we were staying in a hotel, we felt very safe because of the availability of our daily needs at such a close distance. Only our biggest downside was we did not know Hebrew. But the people, i must say, are so helpful and kind that even if they did not understand English, they made sure they went in search of someone who knew and assisted us in some way or the other.

Carousel at Gan HaEm

The Play area at Gan HaEm

Coming back to the park part, with a 3 year old in the family, I oughta keep him entertained. So our evening schedules were pretty much one of the said - (a) Take a bus, go down the hill watching the sun set, to dad's work place, come back to the hotel in the car with him (or) (b) play in the Gan HaEm park till dad's home/hotel. Gan HaEm, meaning mother's park else word to word translation would be (Gan) Park (Ha) The (Em-a)Mother. Be it whatever time of the year, the parks in Israel are always full. It is a very child friendly country. Every 1 or 2 km there is a children's play area. My first few visits to the park, I thought "9 in 10 women I see in a day are pregnant." But that is true, they want their Jewish society to grow, Jews to have more children for reasons we all know :-). Apart from children, Israel is very pet friendly too and the proof - 100s of cats and kittens in every nook and corner of the streets. We clicked this cat as early as Feb,2009 but only in March, 2010 did we get to know its my husband's colleague's cat on Yefe Nof :-).

Our breakfasts were taken care at the hotel. In the afternoon, it was only my son and I. A 3 year old Indian child doesnt eat much. So I borrowed the electric rice cooker from our relocations management personnel and we enjoyed good rasam and curd (yogurt from Shufersal) rice. The same continued in the evenings too, lovely smelling Basmati rice from the Shufersal, got converted to Puliyogare (had carried MTR puliyogare powder) and thayir sadam. The dinner menu did not stop with that, sometimes we even had microwaved papadams. A few days we had dosas from the dosa mix powders I had carried from here. The hotel had provided 2 sauce pans - which I used for rasam or boiling milk for the little one. Borrowed the rice cooker and a wok from the relo-lady. So, we had a fully-southy-kitchenette up and running. 

Some views we enjoyed from the room - 

Yefe Nof street, Louis Promenade, Baha'i, the Bay

Zoom in Baha'i 

Port and a building resembling Burj, Dubai & Axe, UK

Three full weeks in the hotel we felt very much at home, never like an alien in the Mediterranean region. The friendly folks, the beautiful Feb-March weather, the vegetarian falafel, hummus, the beautiful bay views kept us alive and kicking!