HaYarkon Park

This Good Friday we went exploring HaYarkon park which is Tel Aviv's version of Central Park, centered around the Yarkon River.  It's huge! It's sort of misleading near us because we are right on the part of the park where the river flows out to the sea, so it gets small.  But if you walk in the other direction it just keeps going and going.  It turns out there is a 5 acre tropical garden, 10 acre rock garden (which is literally just rocks plopped on the grass...although apparently they are significant rocks to the geology in the area), a pond you can go paddle boating in, many bbq pits (one of the favourite activities of people here), a sport center, petting zoo (with a fancy looking peacock), water-park and aviary.  We only walked around for a few hours but we'll have to go back and explore more when the gardens are open! (It is Passover, day 1, so everything is closed).  Unfortunately we only got one picture - but it's pretty cool :)  Zach took it of this tree that grew over the fence (the new fence is where the camera is).  It's an HDR image, which is Zach's new photography hobby...basically it makes awesome looking pictures using a few exposure settings of the same shot so you can adjust more colour levels....or something like that. I'm gonna be honest - I just look at the pretty end result :)

Today we walked in the little park beside our home and saw this pretty tree!  So if we end up missing the cherry blossom festival in Japan next week - I will have still seen a pretty pink tree :)

Here is another HDR shot of our little park in the sunshine (25C today!) you can see this pink tree in the distance.

And then, when we got back, I got to talk to one of my best friends (via skype) who is brand newly engaged!! Yay! Congratulations Lindi :D  So all in all, despite my having the plague feeling slightly under the weather for the past week or so*, a great Easter weekend thus far.  Tomorrow morning we are attempting to attend an Easter service in the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem...but it means catching a bus at 6am, and quite possibly fending off hordes of Passover and Easter tourists (yes I realize we will be Easter tourists too)... so we'll see :)

*side note:  Zach made the most amazing chicken soup - from scratch.  Like, after we ate a roasted chicken (which he also made!), he put the remains in a pot with water and spices and something called mirepoix (right?) and it turned into delicious chicken broth which then turned into delicious chicken noodle soup.  He's totally amazing.  I didn't even know you could make chicken soup without chicken broth cubes, or what mirepoix was until we got married, haha. Cooking isn't exactly my forte.  I can feel my throat healing already :)