I have had a lot of opportunities to travel to amazing places, and being a “foodie”, I always want to try local specialities and new things. In Greece I ate calamari, fresh feta cheese, freshly caught and grilled fish and authentic Greek salad (no lettuce). In New Orleans I tried gumbo, etitoufee, jambalaya and of course beignets and cafe Au lait. In Hawaii….I named it my “Hawaiian seafood fiesta” (you can read about that in my travel blog).

And now…dining in Israel. What can you say about the food in Israel? Once again, full of amazing dining experiences and tastes, flavours and options. Being in Israel, when you have to choose your food options you have to choose milk or meat because the restaurants are separate (we ate a lot of dairy options) and they were GOOD!

On the first day in Tiberias we walked to a very nice dairy restaurant close to the beach. They had a lot of very nice salad options. I chose one that had haloumi cheese. it is very similar to Saginaki in Greek restaurants, but they don’t set it on fire with ouzo. It is salty, and tests best when served right from the oven. Here are pictures of the salad with the haloumi.

The opening program of the trip was dinner at Decks Restaurant. It is an open air restaurant overlooking the Galilee (the Kinneret). We sat in long tables by our city. The food is served family style across the table.

The opening was of course falafel balls, hummus and tahini, following up by an amazing fried onion loaf, salad, shoe string potatoes, and then the most amazing salmon you have ever tried. It came out on these ‘hot plates’ that had bbq’d sweet potato, grilled mushrooms and grilled lemons.

Here is what it looked like: (Pictures do not do the meal justice)

After the meal they started to play music and the party really started. It was the first night, and the coming together of 170 amazing women for the next 9 days of growth, self discovery and touring of our beautiful Eretz Israel. (the land of Israel)

As I was clapping, singing and dancing, the music changed and a song I have heard hundreds of times came on. I was standing there, and tears were streaming down my face. I realized that I was in Israel. We had already been there a full day, but it wasn’t until that moment that I had really arrived, and my feet were planted firmly on the ground. A lot of people were emotional.

Here is that song: