Lior Mucznik with hostesses Liron and Tanya in the King David Executive Lounge

Presidential Suite with kitchen at left and patio at right

EILAT
Dan Eilat Presidential Suite
Pampers You Like A Royal

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY TIM BOXER

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HEN in Israel for a luxury vacation, you will most likely find your way to Eilat. Especially in winter, when you’ll want to escape the showers in Tel Aviv and the cold snap of the Jerusalem hills. That time of year in Eilat the hotel pools are teeming, the beaches are crowded and the Gulf of Aqaba is great for a dip. Just watch out in the summer – keep in the shade in the afternoon when the temperature climbs above 100 F.

Talk about luxury, you can’t do any better than settling in at the Presidential Suite of the Dan Eilat. Your own sophisticated butler will attend to any needs. It’s not only luxury, it’s heaven. We know from personal experience in January. Nina and I are still reminiscing about it.

Check in on a regular winter day and your bill will reflect a charge of $2,310 per person per night. But if you stay here on peak days, meaning holidays or summertime, expect to pay up to $2,750. To book the room of your choice and check the price of any of the 375 rooms and 30 suites, call 972-8-6362222 or daneilat@danhotels.com.

And we ambled across the hall to the King David Lounge where we nibbled on delicious desserts and raised glasses of wine.

Resources Before you go on any trip, be sure to pack a cell phone. I found it indispensable. My phone wouldn’t work in Israel so I obtained a dedicated Israel cell phone from TravelCell. The Nokia came fully charged (up to seven hours talk time), along with a wall charger, leather case with belt clip, and carrying bag. They even gave me some business cards with the cell phone printed. To rent a cell phone visit www.travelcell.com, call 1-877-CELL PHONE or email sales@travelcell.com. Mention my name and they’ll make you a satisfied customer just like me. I found an essential guide in Frommer’s Israel, 6th edition (Wiley Publishing, soft cover, 534 pages, $23.99, Amazon.com Price: $16.31. On the Dan Eilat: "Adam Tihany, who did the interiors of trendsetting hotels and restaurants on three continents, decorated the public areas with elegant, lively reinterpretations of contemporary décor from the 1940s, 50s and 60s that might be installations in a museum of design." You get the picture: Dan Eilat is a first-class gem among all the high-end hotels in this resort city.

The Presidential Suite spanned almost the entire top 14^th floor; the rest of the floor is the King David Executive Lounge. We spent time lounging on the terrace of our Suite, with our own private outdoor hot tub, with views of Jordan’s Aqaba(and the royal palace) on the left, the city of Eilat on the right, Egyptian border further out, and Saudi Arabia yonder which you can see if you sail out in your yacht. We watched oil tankers and gleaming yachts vying for space on the Gulf of Aqaba.

Nina and I shared some treats in the Executive Lounge with the affable general manager, the refined Lior Mucznik. He’s been here for two years, having come from his previous post at the Dan Panorama Jerusalem. The Dan chain operates 14 hotels throughout the country. So far Nina and I have visited five of their properties in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Our brief stay in Eilat is unsurpassed.

We learned that Mucznik was born in Tel Aviv but raised in Lagos, Nigeria, where his father worked in the oil industry. His father is 80 years old and still goes to his office at Amisragas in Tel Aviv every day. The company is the largest supplier of gas in Israel.

His great grandfather, was the chief rabbi of Lisbon. He helped build the Shaare Tikva Synagogue there in 1904. The president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, hosted a celebration on the synagogue’s centennial in 2004. The president’s maternal grandmother was a Sephardi Jew from Morocco of Portuguese origin. Sampaio was raised Catholic, but considers himself agnostic.

Sultan Ahmet Camii, the Blue Mosque

Courtyard is as big as the whole building

IMAGES OF ISTANBUL
Blue Mosque Is One Of The Most
Celebrated Mosques In The World

PHOTOS BY TIM BOXER

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ultan Ahmet Camii was completed in 1616. This magnificent structure is known far and wide as the Blue Mosque for the blue Iznik tiles that decorate the interior. Iznik, a lakeside town and former Byzantine capital, called Nicaea, was famous for the most superb ceramics in the Ottoman Empire. It is located in an historic area known as Sultanahmet, which was the center of ancient Constantinople.

Resources DK Eyewitness Travel: Top 10 Istanbul guides you to the 10 best sites in Turkey’s most fascinating city. Profusely illustrated with beautiful pictures and informative details of each place. Includes a very useful fold-out map. Plus top 10 lists of restaurants, shops, hotels and lots of insider knowledge. DK Publishing, soft cover, 128 pages, $14.00, Amazon.com Price: $10.74

Disney Wonder cruise ship

Our Odyssey With Disney Wonder

BY SALLY AND IVOR DAVIS

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AN’T wait to file a report on a cruise with our entire family on the Disney Wonder, one of four ships of the Disney fleet. We sailed, we saw, and we survived with memories that will last a lifetime.

We were celebrating a BIG birthday with our immediate family, children and grandchildren from Seattle and Fort Worth.

Team Cruise Disney included our daughter Rebecca Suskind and her husband David (who as a pediatrician would be very useful should the captain of the Disney Wonder drive the ship too close to dry land), their offspring, Elias 9, Sadie 5; our son Gideon Davis, his wife Tricia and their sons, Levi 8, and Ezra 3.

Gideon Davis in hammock at CasaDorada hotel, overlooking the harbor in Cabo St. Lucas

They all flew into LAX and we drove in leisurely fashion from Ventura County to San Pedro (90 minutes)where the 2,700 passenger ship departed on a one-week cruise with stops in Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas. The point after all is not the ports of call but the nonstop Disney immersion on board: a cross between a trip to fairyland and North Korea. But more on that later.

Boarding took longer than we anticipated. They apologized, claiming the pesky immigration people were to blame. But it gave us a chance to see our fellow passengers, draped in Disney regalia, hats, Mickey printed dresses, T-shirts, tote bags, jewelry—and that was just the adults.

The first night at sea we had dinner en famille at the Artisan’s Palette, surrounded by cells from Disney cartoons which changed from black and white, matching the restaurant’s décor, to color, throughout the meal. Even the waiters were in on the act with black and white Disney printed waistcoats.

The next night it was the Parrot’s Cay dining room. Dinner was accompanied by a cacophony of parrot squawks. Not all parrots, we discovered; just a handful of kids in various states of meltdown.

Check Out This Hotel Our Ventura County travel agent suggested while in Cabo we might like to check out one of the five-star hotels on the beach for a change of pace. From the dock it was minutes to the Casa Dorada resort for lunch---and a spectacular view. (www.casadorada.com) Good choice. Hotels have been struggling in Cabo (and all over Mexico) because of the economy and those Mexican banditos who have swapped plastic swords for a more fearsome form of weaponry. The hotel staff welcomed us as if we were guests and not just because they needed the business. They were at 80% occupancy which isn’t bad at any time, let alone in these days when Mexico has had reams of bad publicity. We had a wonderful lunch with great margaritas, on the patio/pool area—with panoramic views of the ocean at Baja’s land’s end. The Disney Wonder sat in the bay looking like a toy ship, as scores of pleasure boats, glass bottom boats and wind surfers turned offered a view of paradise.

Ezra Davis and Sadie Suskind with Disney characters Captain Hook and Mr. Smee

This was to get us ready for the highlight of the trip – Pirate Night with more pirates large and small than on a Somalia raid. The entire ship got into the spirit, donning tri-cornered hats, eye patches, frilly shirts,moustaches and side-arms. Our three-year-old Ezra threatened to wreak serious damage with his plastic broadsword.

The show ended at 11 o’clock with a terrific fireworks display from the bridge over the ocean—the only ship at sea permitted to engage in pyrotechnics. Kids were tottering around the poop deck like drunken sailors, so excited and overtired that they refused to go to bed until they collapsed in a pile of exhaustion.

And talking about the poop deck, we all got used to the fact that the two kid’s pools on board Goofy’s and Mickey’s, (thank heavens there was also an adults only pool) were often closed without warning for "emergency repairs" which of course, was a euphemism for ….well you can guess. With all those excited young ‘uns jumping into the heated waters there was bound to be an accident…or two.

The kids had a ball and so did we as we lined up with the grandkids for thirty minutes or more to have photos taken with Mickey and Minnie, Captain Hook and Mr. Smee and the rest of the Disney gang.

Sadie Suskind as a savage pirate of the Caribbean

Oh sure, sometimes the Disney ballyhoo got a bit much.

That’s the North Korean bit. All that Fairy dust, the constant Disney music playing everywhere, the Disney movies screening in a loop on our stateroom TV screens and in the two big public theatres, the endless promotion of "Walt’s dream" and "Walt’s spirit," and the "if you believe it will happen" Disney philosophy...Disney as propagandist could teach North Korea’s Junior Kim Jonga thing or two.

Occasionally it felt like being on a very large retreat with a religious cult.

But the food was excellent. The buffets in between meals provided an endless supply of snacks, drinks, smoothies and sundaes. And you can imagine our joy when the kids gobbled up dinner every night ---and rushed off to the well serviced Oceaneers club leaving us older kids to enjoy a glass of wine and a tranquil meal—topped off by desserts galore.

One night the kids announced grandly, "We’re going to the club," and the adults enjoyed dinner in peace at the featured restaurant Palo where you pay a modest $20 supplement per person for the finest Northern Italian dinner we ever had.

The entertainment was very professional. The movies were mostly Disney offerings. We sat through the Muppet Movie and can now sing, not very well, two verses of the Oscar winning Man or Muppet song.

Our favorite show was the hilarious ventriloquist/comedian Michael Harrison from Canada (www.funnyguy.ca) We saw him twice.

Our balcony cabins were comfortable, with lots of storage space. We loved having two separate bathrooms—one full and one half.

We enjoyed the gym (you need one after four or five nightly desserts) and the spa where the sauna was so hot you could fry two-minute eggs in ten seconds.

Pint-size pirates of the Caribbean, Levi Davis and Elias Suskind

Service was superb, except in the Triton restaurant where breakfast was surprisingly slow and creaky. And where the multinational staff didn’t understand that for Americans coffee comes as soon as you sit down.

We were relieved that the Captain of the Disney Wonder turned out to be a strapping Scandinavian – always a source of confidence. Italians need not apply.

The service crew were a real mix: Indians, Indonesians, Burmese, Eastern Europeans, Irish, English and assorted Aussies. All were gracious, hardworking and incredibly patient with the squads of kids who took half an hour to make up their minds what they wanted to eat and then changed them half a dozen times in ten minutes.

The offshore trips went smoothly. At Puerto Vallarta we took the local bus to the old town for lunch. Public transport is actually safer for those nervous about Mexico.

Our daughter took her kids to swim with the porpoises. Our son found a remote beach to snorkel.

Sally and Ivor Davis with grandchildren Ezra and Levi

Cabo San Lucas felt very safe. It seems to have been spared the vicissitudes of some of the resorts on the Mexican mainland. Nice beaches and tons of cafes with views of the water. We decided to lunch at the five-star Casa Dorada Hotel (see sidebar). It was a splendid afternoon by the pool and beach.

Our stateroom was on Deck 6 midship—with a balcony at $1,230 per person. The entire family trip was booked by Martha Jaffe, Travel Planner International of Ventura California (phone 805-642-6034: cell 805-218-3324). Check out diverse prices as kids travel much cheaper.

One tip: Don’t use the ATM machines offering US currency in Mexico. They clobber you for astounding extra bank charges.

We probably won’t go on another Disney Cruise for awhile. Cunard’s Queen Mary II from New York to London is our next odyssey.