Eilat, Israel

8/27/09 (Three days ago)


The weekend in Israel is Friday and Saturday, so after Lily got out of class Thursday (and I finished a meeting with several students interested in MSFC!) we took the 3.5 hr bus through the Negev desert to Eilat, Israel. This is the southernmost city in Israel and is located on the Red Sea.






It's amazing to me how many naturally beautiful setttings are in one country. I feel like a broken record, but of course Eilat was gorgeous. It is very touristy, though (and quite pricey.) The water tastes better than the Dead Sea, so there's that!

This is the view from our hostel.

So...let me tell you about our adventure that night. Lily had been told of a unique restaurant where you eat underwater. She booked us reservations on their very enticing website, and we were excited to see that the restaurant was literately across the street from where we were staying.

Before dinner, we sat down at the beach and just took in the scenery. That's when we started to realize that nobody was walking on the pier to the restaurant. For at least an hour there was no movement in or out. That, combined with a slightly run-down look of the place made us nervous that somehow it wasn't opened, even though Lily received a personal reservation confirmation just a day before.

Finally we saw a couple emerge from the restaurant, so we asked them if it was open. They said yes, so we were happy. We dressed up at the hostel and headed over to the restaurant at our appointed time.













Oh. My. God. This had to have been the worst restaurant experience of my life. We walked in, and a girl (not dressed in any sort of restaurant worker clothes) finally stopped her conversation to look up at us. We said that we had reservations, and she motioned for us to follow her to the elevator. We went down, and emerged into a restaurant WITHOUT A SINGLE CUSTOMER! Needless to say, we were quite sketched out. We asked the waitress why no one was there, and she just kinda shrugged and said "not good publicity." Keep in mind this is a huge restaurant right on the beach visible from the boardwalk. We decided to sit down anyway (we certainly had our choice of seats) and just look at the menu.

Now, Lily has the pictures of the place so I'll have to wait to post some, but let me tell you about the decor. It felt like we were on the scene of a SpongeBob Squarepants movie. It was NOT the classy type restaurant they showed on the website.

The prices were, though! The food was astronomically expensive. My vote was to leave right then, but Lily was really excited about an appetizer that she likes a lot so we decided to just order that. I also ordered "carbonated apple juice."

Well, my drink came out first, and Lily and I decided after tasting it that it was noncarbonated, watered-down cranberry juice. When the waitress came over, I said that this was not what I ordered. She said, "yes, carbonated apple juice." I explained that there were no bubbles in it, and she said, "yes, but that's what it is." I really wasn't being rude (I hope) but I told her that "carbonated" means bubbles. She then shrugged and said that there must be a mistake in the menu.

Then Lily's tuna tartar comes out. Now, I'm not as used to food like that as Lily is, but she said that tuna tartar is wonderful and it's raw tuna marinated in something. This particular version said it comes wrapped in salmon. When it came to our table it actually had a lot of promise - there was effort made to make the plate look pretty, with vegetables and goat cheese surrounding the tuna tartar. Lily was so happy she took a picture of it. Turns out that excitement was a bit premature.

Lily peeled away a layer of the salmon and thought it looked a bit odd, but took a bite anyway. It was CANNED TUNA!! They literately scooped a ball of canned tuna and hid it under the salmon wrap.

That was the last straw, and we informed the waitress that this was not, in fact, tuna tartar. We left and went somewhere else!