First few days
We arrived at the apartment and Dani the building manager met us there to let us in. The van driver helped us unload our 18 bags + carry-ons + cats onto the sidewalk while Dani assured us that they would be safe there while we went up to look at the apartment. He gave us our two sets of keys, showed us around the apartment, the mailboxes, etc, and then started helping me carry the bags inside the not-airconditioned lobby. Another tenant showed us (and reminded Dani) that there were a few shopping carts that were kept in the stairwell for people to use to help carry groceries or other things up to their apartments. Dani left once all the bags were inside the lobby, and I was able to make six trips up the elevator, piling the duffle bags three at a time on the shopping cart.
Once inside the apartment, we immediately set to work setting up the temporary folding cat litter box we had carried with us, and dumped the ziplock bag of cat litter we had carried with us into the box. After we had filled a couple of folding silicone bowls with cat food and water, we unpacked the sleeping bags and put them on the bare mattresses where the kids promptly passed out. Val and I walked about 3/4 of a mile into town to a local market to get a few necessities, toilet paper, tissues, soap, laundry detergent, some breakfast food, etc. It ended up filling several heavy bags, which we assumed we would just have to carry home ourselves. But when the clerk asked us if we wanted help carrying the bags to our car and we said we didn’t have a car, she and the other guy working with her said they would be closing the store in 10 more minutes and that they’d be happy to drop off the bags at our apartment. How cool is that? So we walked one store over, ordered some kosher take-out pizza for the kids, and carried just that home. When we arrived, our grocery bags were waiting just outside our door. Not bad for a first day.
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The next day it occurred to us that were not going to be able to survive without a car so we called a taxi to take us back to airport since we knew we’d be able to rent a car there for a week or two while we figured out how to obtain a more permanent vehicle. As is the case whenever we go on a trip to Israel, we were totally ripped off at the rental car counter, but as always, we decided to suck it up as I only half-jokingly made a mental note to deduct it from my next JNF donation. While at the airport we were also luckily able to retrieve the cell phone which one of my kids had left on the airplane. Then after some googling we were able to find a pet store in Hod Hasharon, a nearby town, where we were able to buy more cat litter, a couple of proper litter boxes, a bag of cat food and two small cat trees/scratch posts. After dropping off the cat stuff at the apartment we made the first of many trips to Ikea.
