L2O2

Wadi Nisnas, what a lyrical name. Go ahead, say it again, Wa di Nis nas. It is the Arabic shopping bazaar in Haifa. All week long, except Sunday, you can find little shops full of spices, open air vegetable markets, grind your coffee while you wait places, tacky gift shops, hardware stores, whatever one is looking for. But on Saturday morning, the place really comes alive. There are extra vendors, more fruits and vegetables and cars. Cars and narrow, back alley size streets don’t mix too well, not quite like oil and water, but close enough. Small traffic jams flare up and just as quickly “un-jam” themselves. Not without the mandatory horn honking and typical Middle Eastern hand gestures. It’s all quite funny really, and very much better to be on foot, though, at times, your life is in the hands of God.

And when you are finished poking around in the Wadi, you can make your way over to the Hadar, the main Jewish shopping area in Haifa. One long street, block after block of men & women’s fashion shops, shoe stores, Dollarama type stores, restaurants, fabric stores, oh well you get the idea. Don’t come down here on Saturday though, that is Shabbat, the Jewish “Sunday”, unless you want to just window shop. You won’t find much open, just Russian owned stores like this crazy supermarket in this office building.

But for real flavor, one must visit the Akka market in, where else, but Akka. Ancient is not an exaggeration. Butcher shops and fish mongers, juice vendors, and candy shops… hmmmm nougat!

But the “piece de resistance” is IKEA at 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. We heard that the IKEA store opens on Saturday (Shabbat) from 9:00-11:00 p.m. and we were in the neighborhood around 8:25 p.m. so thought what the heck, who will be out at that time of day. A little leisurely shopping to finish off the day. 1,500 people by the time the doors opened, parking lot a mass of vehicles and not just “recreational shopping” but down and dirty, serious, tape measure out, calling the attendants over, shopping. Once again as I have been finding myself repeating lately, “only in Israel”.