V-Day celebration 2012

For Valentine's day, we went to this place called Hamat Gader Hot Spring and Spa resort situated near the sea of Galilee. Its about 2 hrs drive from the place where we stayed, so we had to leave quite early in the morning on that day.

 We took the package which include admission, massage and a lunch. So, the first thing we did was to have lunch inside the resort at a restaurant called Siam.

 View of the restaurant

 The menu

 The interior decor is still quite nice. We sat next to the window overlooking into the hot spring pool area, so can see a lot of people soaking in the water.

 Starter dish, some kind of fried spring onion pancake or sth.

 Spicy thai soup which did not look like thai soup at all to me, but taste ok

 Big fried spring rolls and fried pieces of white fish.

 I ordered kong pow chicken with cashew

 Hubby ordered fish

comes with rice and noodles.

Overall, the food was only so-so and the portions were too big for us that we did not even have space for dessert. 

 Views of the hot spring resort

The weather was very cold and it was rainy. Although there were steams coming out from the water, the water temp was not really as hot as the hot springs I encountered in Japan. 

We managed to soak for about 10mins before the going for our massage appointment. The massage was 45mins long.

After that, we soaked for another 10mins in the pool before calling it a day coz its very cold outside and staying too long in the water is making me uncomfortable. Its probably single digit temp outside, while I dashed shivering to the bathroom in just swimwear and a wet towel. I would prob enjoyed myself more if it werent SO freaking CCOOLDDD and crowded.

Part 2 of Vday celebration was at a very nice restaurant in Tel Aviv called Dallal, I love the decors of this place. 

They had a Valentine's Day menu in addition to the normal menu, unlike in SG, where there only served the overpriced V day menu for almost all restaurants on that day. In Israel, V day is not as commercialized as in SG.

We took the V day menu instead. The first dish consist of this artichoke soup. Tasted really nice!

 Also came with 2 cocktails- champagne strawberry soda. V interesting drink! I am too busy drinking the soup and looking at my cocktail, to notice someone taking candid pics of me.

 Our waitress was v friendly and offered to help us take a pic together

 There was some pieces of strawberries floating in a fizzy red mixture. Taste quite nice.

 Sashimi tuna...yumyum~!

 Cant remb what is this dish. There were so many dishes. All the portions were small and just nice for me.

 This pan seared calamari with chick peas and humus sauce was the tastiest of all. I had no idea it was in humus until the waitress told us.

 Salad with sour spicy sauce and crispy fried nuts.

 My main course was grilled fish with mash potatoes and black truffles. The mash potatoes together with the black truffles tasted awesome~The fish was perfectly cooked, soft and moist inside with a slight salty crispy skin.

 Hubby ordered lambchops with some risotto type rice.

 Pre-dessert was this champagne sorbet with strawberries. I can only taste champagne.....its quite strong.

Dessert was this funny looking dish with a hot pot of stew fruits and rasins, and we were supposed to add the cream, cookies and ice cream inside the pot and stirred. Tasted quite good.

While waiting for dessert, a lady came over with a huge basket containing many small gifts and asked me to pick one, sort of like a lottery coz there were chocolates and jewelleries inside those boxes. It part of the V day celebration. I got chocolate instead, but it was quite fun. 

Overall, it was a good V day dinner and a very good deal for only 220 shekels (about 70 SGD), which I dun think you can get such a price for a V day dinner in a fancy restaurant in SG on that special day. In fact, I dun even like to celebrate V day in SG coz its too commercialized and overpriced, kindda lost its meaning already. To me, anyday can be a V day, not just on 14th Feb coz its the thought that counts.