Day 288 (a full day in Tzfat)

We had a nice time this morning walking around and looking at art. I am still shocked by the sheer number of galleries with open doors and no one in them. In most cases, the owner wandered in while we were there, but there was more than one gallery where we walked in, looked around, and left with seeing nary a soul. And no, these aren't the sort of galleries with extensive back rooms where someone might have been hiding.

My boys napped in the afternoon, and I wandered around myself, which I enjoyed mightily. Furthermore, for the first time in my life, I bought Art. (As you may recall, The Caped Avenger foolishly and generously just gave his stuff away. Haha on him. But now I really need to pay him.) As happened so often in the morning, the art gallery I really wanted to see (watercolors and glassblowing) had no one in it. The sign on the door said OPEN, though, so I moved the rock from in front of the door and wandered inside. (In retrospect, if there's a rock in front of the door, it means no one's inside... hello...) I looked around, and found something I liked, so I called the cell number on the business cards near the front, and asked if she was around. No, the artist told me, she was actually on her way to parent-teacher conferences, but she'd send someone over. She did, and now I have a canvas print of a woman dancing with her daughter!

I've also wanted a silk painting since I saw one when I was in seminary. I knew I wanted bright, warm colors, but I never though I'd get a picture of Ema's irises. But I did! (I also learned not to be shy in bargaining: the painting was about 30% more than I was prepared to fork over, so I was really torn. When the artist asked me how much I was looking to spend, I told her: and she said fine, with no arguing! Whoops, I should have quoted an even lower price, it seems.)

For dinner, we had a real "חוויה." (Literally "experience:" That's the word we used in seminary when we were doing something out of our comfort zone and we weren't sure that we were enjoying ourselves. "Well," we would say, "This sure is a chavaya, anyway!) After wandering up and down the main road, we went into an unassuming fleishig place. The owner showed us into the warm eating area and gave us our menus, which were composed of nice, normal menu covers containing one sheet of lined paper with a handwritten list of food and prices. The prices were a bit steep, but by then we weren't sure how to back out of eating there.

The menu only listed the main dishes, so Husbinator asked what was included, and the proprietor said, "Everything." The other useful hint he gave us was when we asked him what the "splenectomy" (טחול) was, he told us, "Not for you." Well, that's what we wanted to know! So we ordered, and while he cooked our food, he brought out some pita and dips. A lot of pita and dips. One might, in fact, describe that course with the word, "Everything." BSM was especially thrilled: one of the dips was purple cole slaw, which is something that he loves and I give him only rarely. Purple cabbage is not kind to that with which in comes into contact.

As we were finishing up our dips course, mine host brings out our HUGE portions of steak/chicken/mini burgers, plus a nice salad, plus fries. Oh man oh man oh man. Yeah, it cost about 1.5x what we had expected, but we also got about 1.5x what we expected. And the food was absolutely delicious. And since we failed to garner any meal invitations through Shabbat.com, we packed up the leftovers for Shabbos. This was a good חוויה.