Every time you see a picture-perfect image have a giggle (or roll your eyes). There is no such thing as perfect. Photos capture perfect moments, like a frothy cappuccino, a delicious meal, a smiling family. But the true reality is the moments before and after that picture is taken. They are usually less than perfect.

Yesterday I posted pics from Tel Aviv, that fantastical, fun city, where I always feel on holiday. What the pictures don’t describe are the forty minutes it took me, circling the Tel Aviv Port parking lot, to find a parking spot. Nor do they portray the nightmare drive back of highway traffic blockages, with Waze taking us a back, winding way, adding hours. It finished up with both kids vomiting bucket loads, twenty minutes to ETA. And a happy day was not had by all, despite those lovely (and they were lovely) picture moments. 

Tel Aviv – Beach Area for Dogs

Tea at Carlton Hotel – Check out the Pesach cookie.

I should have known that Pesach holidays in Israel are jam-packed with Israelis and tourists trekking to beautiful nature spots. Quick learner that I am (read traumatised), we chose to stay in Jerusalem today, rather than face another highway. Instead, we pumped our bikes and headed onto the quiet streets of Jerusalem (everyone was stuck on their holiday, highway journeys so the streets were virtually empty). I could have posted the idyllic scene, mother and two boys happily cycling on the Jerusalem bike paths. And yes that was the joyous scene until my son fell twice. I thought he broke his wrist – he didn’t. It was frightening. It was not picture perfect.

In the afternoon we visited Machane Yehuda Shuk. Here are a picture and a video.

Perfect Iraqi Pesach meal – Rice, rice & rice!

Impromptu Shuk Show. This is a story of two passersby stopping to accompany a busker in the middle of the Shuk street.

Watch the video here – IMG_7706

They portray everything I love about Shuk Machane Yehuda. We had a Sephardic, Pesach dream of a hot meal; meat and rice, hummus and stuffed vine leaves. What I’m not showing are the heavy foot and car traffic. I knew how to navigate them as a Jerusalemite, but truth be told it was busy, and sweaty with people bumping into each other. That’s the Shuk during Pesach holidays – busy.

And that’s life, it’s not picture perfect. Life is a mix of wonderful, joyous moments and moments of vomit, being squished or beeped at. We don’t post pictures of those. But for me, freedom, in this day and age of social media, is knowing that the images we see are exactly that – images. And there’s always a wider, usually not so perfect, let’s call it human, story to go with it, whether the writer shares it or not.