These boots were made for walking…

…or not.

We don’t have a car. This is not an issue.  With excellent public transport (trains and buses) and most things well within walking distance, we don’t really need a car.

That being said, my poor takkies (sneakers/running shoes) are taking a beating.  And don’t get me started on walking in my boots or ballet flats.

And my feet! I gave calluses on calluses.

On Friday Paul and I walked around running some errands.  Everything was within a kilometer or two of our house, but everything was in different directions.  We walked over 13km and only took the bus in the afternoon when the kids were with us.

Yesterday there was a kite festival in Modi’in.  It looked like fun so we decided to go.  We mapped out our walk on Google Maps and in theory it was a 35 minute walk over 2.8km.  We have a cram (Crappy pRAM) that we push Faith in, there is no way we would walk anywhere further than 500m without Faith being in the cram, she is slower than a turtle walking behind a snail. Going backwards.

Things started looking wrong when Google (bless it) decided to take us up a rather long flight of stairs instead of on the road.  We changed over to ‘car’ mode and the directions switched.  To a road on a very very steep hill.  I did get to take this awesome pano of our beautiful city though.

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Ultimately it took us about an hour and 4km of walking to get there.  But once we were there we had fun.  we bought kites for the kids and some popcorn and drinks and spent a good hour or so flying kits.

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The walk back was about 4km too but Paul managed to find a route without Mount Everest in it.

In total we walked almost 8.5km yesterday.

Most of the time I dont mind not having a car.  The last two days though… Yup, I would have LOVED a car!

To take with or not to take with…

Housing in Israel is very very different to South Africa.  Most people live in apartment buildings, and they are not huge apartments either. Even houses are different, most being multi-level with no gardens or very small gardens.

A typical Modiin neighbourhood
A typical Modiin neighbourhood

We will be moving into a 2 bedroom apartment.  The kids will be getting a bunk bed.  We need to sell our King Size extra length bed since there is no way it would fit into an Israeli apartment.

So, this is our ‘Take With’ list:

  • All our kitchen stuff, cutlery, crockery, pots, pans etc…
  • Washing machine
  • Tumble dryer
  • Dishwasher!
  • Small appliances
  • Dining room suite (its an antique that I just had recovered and I love it), includes 8 chairs and a sideboard
  • 2 additional side boards (one I use to store my Pesach things and the other is my linen cupboard)
  • Lounge table
  • Clothes
  • Kids toys (2 boxes each)
  • All our linen, blankets, duvets, pillows etc…

This is our ‘Not to Take With’ list:

  • Our Smeg fridge
  • Smeg freezer (we wont have space for a full fridge and a full freezer)
  • Lounge suite (Its very big and also needs to be recovered)
  • TV (very old)
  • TV cabinet
  • Bookshelves
  • Kids beds
  • Our bed and bedside tables

Trying to decide what to take and what not to take is hard, especially since we dont know what our new apartment will look like yet (we are trying to find an apartment as I type).

What would be your MUST take items?