flowers in a pot in Beit Shemesh, Israel – taken from balcony of an apartmentI just came back from a one week trip in Israel. After discussing various options for connecting on social media and keeping up with my email, I decided to bring my iPad mini on my trip. This post will examine where it worked and where it did not. In the comments, feel free to offer your own travel advice.
Connecting with the iPad in Israel
Originally, we were supposed to stay with my cousins most of the time. However, due to circumstances beyond their control, we stayed with a relative by marriage (who was an absolutely wonderful hostess). She had great wifi in her apartment, so when we came back after our busy days we were able to both re-connect and re-charge our iPads (I was traveling with my eldest son, and we both have iPads). The three prong adapter seemed to do the charging better than the two prong, so I would suggest buying a three prong adapter if you are traveling from the U.S. to Israel. I bought the adapter easily on Amazon. If you stay in a hotel, I would assume most of them will have great wifi available to guests. Verify before booking your place.
train station in Petach Tikva
Israel-Railways: I loved traveling on trains in Israel. The wifi is free, although I discovered it is not very strong, and you may not have any if you sit in the “wrong” part of the train (is the corner not a good spot? I would need the locals to help with this). Even when I did get decent wifi on the train, it was not strong enough to upload a photo. So save your photo sharing for the strong wifi locations.
Tel-Aviv Art Museum: Yay, Tel Aviv! The art museum had its own wifi, so we were will able to look up the museum website for more information while viewing. The Israel Museum did not have this feature. I might write a post comparing the two museums in general. Both were wonderful. In general, the Tel Aviv municipality has approved a budget for free wifi in the city, in parks, main streets and commercial centers (coming soon in 2013?).
The Galil seems to have less options for free wifi than the central part of the country. This is not surprising, as the Galil is more rural.
You can sit on the Ben Yehudah mall in Jerusalem and depending where you sit, it is not hard to find free wifi. The Jerusalem bus station had enough wifi for me to load one Google map of Jerusalem unto my iPad, then it went away or asked for a password.
One friend I visited had computers but no wifi. I Googled connecting my iPad via her networked computer, but it didn’t seem so simple to do. One techie friend said I would probably have needed to add iTunes to her computer. I certainly didn’t have the right administrative privileges to do so, but the truth is, with guest privileges I could check email and Facebook, so what more did I need?
Ben-Gurion airport had free wifi while we waited to board (leaving Israel). When we got off the plane (arriving), we had none, but my cousin came right away so there really was no time, anyway.
Setting up your iPad for your trip
In some ways, my iPad was prepared properly. In other ways, I would have done things differently. I downloaded a few games that required no wifi for the plane ride. I got fairly good at Bejeweled Blitz on the plane – I don’t have the patience to read books on planes. I only got through a few pages of Jane Austen’s Emma (which I had downloaded for free in advance via Free Books app).
A big mistake I made in preparing my iPad for the trip was that I set up my email to work, but I only checked incoming mail and not outgoing. I couldn’t get the setup for outgoing mail in Israel for my regular mail, so I depended on my Gmail account. If you regularly use Gmail, just download the Gmail app in advance. I prefer to do work correspondence with my leoraw account; for future travel, I will make sure I have outgoing mail set up properly as well.
Facebook and Twitter on the iPad are easy: just download the apps in advance and make sure they work properly. I found it nice to take a few photos with iPad as I traveled. Then, when I had the chance, I shared one on Facebook and one on Google+. Most of my photos I took with my Canon Rebel. But I wasn’t planning to utilize those photos until after my trip was over – the ones on my Canon I will probably edit a bit before sharing.
On turning mail accounts on and off: I share the iPad with my daughter. I added my email accounts to the iPad a while back, checked them, and then turned them off. For the trip, I turned off her email account. Now that I am back, I should turn her email account back on and turn off my email accounts.
I actually bought a pocketbook for the trip in which my iPad mini fit exactly. So it was simple to carry it around – it even came with me on the hike on Mount Meron in the Galil. I have great photos of flora and of views from that hike. The famous red poppies were in bloom for me.
Planning the next trip
Although it may be a while before I go on my next international adventure, I am still thinking ahead to how I might plan differently next time. By the time I next travel, I suspect I will have a different smart phone. I will probably want to get some sort of SIM card for the smart phone so I can connect almost anywhere instead of searching for wifi. But the truth is, not being connected everywhere is not so terrible. It’s OK to just enjoy nature without needing to look on Facebook. If I don’t use my smartphone in Israel, I would spend more time getting a better Israeli phone for rental. The ones we rented I would not recommend.
What is your travel advice?
I am sure some of you have traveled more than I have. What have you found useful for connecting online? What questions would you advise to a traveler anticipating a trip?
Highland Park Street Fair 2013 – umbrellas in the rain
Despite the rain, people wandered down Raritan Avenue last Sunday exploring the booths, talking to vendors and meeting friends. Maybe I’ll use this as inspiration for a watercolor – I love the colorful umbrellas.
On My Blog
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
Learn about Paneer, an Indian dairy dish, on Hannah’s Nook.
Lorri reviews The Golem and the Jinni – looks promising! A bit of fantasy crossed with historical fiction mixed with mixed cultures.
As an experiment, I wrote this post before I left for Israel, left it as a draft in my WordPress backend, and published it via my iPad mini while visiting Israel. Hope to publish some posts with Israel pics soon.
I did a sketch/drawing last Sunday of the boy talking to the fisherman. You can see the first sketch and learn a little about the background of the subject matter: a colored pencil drawing. I keep thinking I should perhaps go back to oils to get more control, especially since I am working on human beings. But oils take a lot of preparation time just to get started painting. Maybe I will try ink and some watercolor. Or some other combination.
Meanwhile, thank you for reading/looking/commenting. If you like, you can take a stab at this question: What the fisherman is thinking?
Boy and man fishing by the Raritan River, drawing in colored pencils 2013 by Leora Wenger
It’s been a while since I posted a bit of art. I took a photo of a boy talking to a man fishing by the edge of the Raritan River. I decided it would make a nice subject for a painting, so I did this sketch with colored pencils. It has a similar feel to the watercolor I did last summer of two men relaxing by the Raritan River (presumably, they had been fishing at the Raritan River before relaxing).
When you look at the boy and man, what do you imagine is the relationship between the two? I’ll let you in on the setting: it was taken at the community Lag B’omer event (the 33rd day of the Omer, a day of celebration in the Jewish calendar) in Donaldson Park. I’m assuming the boy was there because of Lag B’omer, and the man just happened to be fishing nearby.
I also started working on an “urbanscape” – a painting of “downtown” Highland Park, basically a piece of Raritan Avenue. I’m not terribly happy with the composition, so I may put it aside or work on one piece. I have three busy weeks ahead, so I will have little time to do art for a while.
Happy Mother’s Day to those who celebrate. Happy Shavuot to those who celebrate. Enjoy a beautiful spring day, if you are lucky enough as we are in New Jersey to have a gorgeous one outside.
We are coming up on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot (starts next Tuesday night), and it is customary to bring flowers into one’s home. My azaleas are in bloom this week; who knows how they will appear next Tuesday when I am looking for blossoms to choose? My tulips have come and gone already.
Any guesses what this is? The water is dripping/pouring down from the kitchen faucet. I have a glass bowl on top of an apron that is spread over my kitchen sink. I decided to take pictures of water. Good way to waste time when you have other important things to do that you would rather neglect and play with camera and water.
Decided to call this post “wet water” – but isn’t water always wet.
I love walking by my neighbor’s lilac bush at this time of year. I have fond childhood memories of sniffing lilac flowers at a bush near my home. Do you have any memories of lilacs?
Last week Rutgers Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy hosted a talk by Professor Kenneth T. Jackson on Newark’s Decline and Resurgence in the 20th Century. The talk was available via webcast to those watching from a distance. I managed to listen to much of the talk. My apologies to Prof. Jackson for any remarks I may have misinterpreted.
Professor Jackson spoke on the history of Newark, New Jersey and gave possible ideas for reviving the city in the near future. Newark is the largest city in New Jersey. Back in 1890-1900, said Professor Jackson, Newark leaders decided not to annex various neighboring areas when they had the opportunity. This meant that there is little room for larger single family homes in the city, and so when people wanted to own a house, they had to leave the city. The riots in the 1960’s signaled an end to the city’s prosperity, as people who would previously visit, for example, department stores in the downtown stopped doing so. Much of the city’s decline, he suggested, was due to choices of the leaders; he gave the example of Atlanta as a city that worked with African American leaders to keep the city safer and more economically stable. A similar city in decline would be Detroit. Professor Jackson didn’t have much good to say about Lewis Danzig, a city planner for Newark in the mid-twentieth century. Currently, the State of New Jersey pays for much of the Newark public school system, as the city itself can not afford to do so. He feels Cory Booker, the current mayor, is working hard for the city, and he hopes he will succeed.
Another failure in Newark history was poor land use control. Newark was home to various industries such as tanning, brewing and leather goods. Newark allowed factories to be located near neighborhoods. Agent Orange was manufactured in Newark.
Professor Jackson did not devote much time to Newark’s Jewish history, although he did share the slide of the shul that was converted into a church on the top of this post (see another New Jersey shul that is now a church). In the earlier half of the twentieth century, Newark had a vibrant Jewish community. My husband, who grew up by the Jersey shore, remembers old-timers talking about “Shabbos in Newark.”
At the end of the lecture on Newark and declining cities, Professor Jackson shared a few points about how Newark might be revitalized:
Newark’s crime rate is very, very high. In contrast, the crime rate in the Bronx has gone down. The crime rate needs to be taken under control.
The city should welcome gays and artists.
People need to be seen and walking around and not afraid to do so. If the public has the perception that crime is going down, it will help the crime rate go down. If you believe it is safe, it becomes safer.
One of his favorite suggestions for the revival of a city is sidewalk cafes – people get outside together in public in a social manner. He had many examples of cities that have declined and cities that have been revitalized – one he mentioned that experienced revitalization after a long, long period was Athens.
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Are there declining cities where you live? Are there cities that experienced decline but now enjoy some revitalization? Finally, if you live in a part of the world far from New Jersey, have you ever heard of Newark?
I often make more brown rice than I need, so I was inspired to create a rice salad to use up my leftover rice. There was a recipe for a crunchy vegan rice salad in a Molly Katzen cookbook that I had made long ago. I didn’t reconsult her cookbook to work on this recipe, but I had some of idea of what I wanted to attain based on her sweet and sour crunchy rice salad recipe.
Ingredients
1 cup cooked rice (you can certainly use more – just use more of the other ingredients)
1 zucchini, chopped into half moons, sauted in coconut oil (I’ve tried it with olive oil – I strongly prefer the coconut oil)
1 handful sunflower seeds (you can also try cashews, slivered almonds, pumpkin seeds and/or sesame seeds)
1/2 cup orange juice or juice of 1 orange (or a combination of both)
1 tsp. tamari sauce
1/2 tsp. sesame oil
2 chopped red radishes (or chop up a red pepper – the idea is to get the color red – you could also try chopped carrots)
1 handful chopped fresh parsely (or cilantro)
3 chopped scallions
How to Make the Rice Salad
Assuming you already have cooked rice, coat the rice with olive oil. Add sesame oil, tamari and orange juice. Saute the zucchini (chopped into half circle shapes) until tender. Add chopped radish, seeds and chopped parsley. Toss together. Refrigerate and serve one day later.
About the Crunchy Vegan Rice Salad Recipe
This recipe can be altered as you please. The idea is to add sweet, salty and sour flavors to a grain. Toss in crunchy foods, and you have a delicious, healthy salad. What would you add to a rice salad?
Thank you to everyone who responded to my images of rice salad. Appreciate the feedback.
I have a rice salad recipe that I am planning to post. I created two versions of the photo of the rice salad. Which rice salad photo do you prefer? (top or bottom)
