Taking on Tel Aviv

I arrived in Tel Aviv just about a week ago and have been staying with a family friend in the northern suburb of Herzliya.  I arrived at around 8:00pm last Thursday from Jerusalem and after a bit of confusion over the address, which involved borrowing a cell phone from the teenage store clerk down the street, I finally got to the right house.  The woman I'm staying with, Carrie, is the daughter of one of my mother's friends.  She herself has a son and daughter who are just a little bit younger than me.  Carrie grew up in the same hometown as me so it is fun to share stories about our childhoods.

View of the Mediterranean and Tel Aviv from Jaffa

Perhaps because I have been staying at someone's home instead of in a hostel I seem to have hit some sort of travel wall where instead of going out exploring I have pretty much become a homebody.  This is partially do to my apparent lack of motivation currently, but is also related to the seemingly endless stream of rainy days we've had over the past week.  I know it's to be expected since it's the wintertime, but it doesn't help me to get out the door when all I see are sheets of rain coming down outside.  Last Friday I don't think I even left the house once, though I did have some good conversations with Carrie and helped her to cook dinner.

Public plaza in Jaffa

On Saturday I actually had a really fun time hanging out with my friends, Hagar and Ido, who I had met while on the Mekong Delta Tour from Vietnam to Cambodia back in September.  They picked me up at Carrie's house and brought me to the old Arabic port town of Jaffa, which is now part of the city of Tel Aviv.  I felt bad for Hagar because she had just come off of a hard overnight shift at the hospital where we works as a doctor, though she assured me that she had been looking forward to meeting up.  We parked down by the water then walked through the harbor up to a really pretty scenic overlook of the Mediterranean Sea.  We then stopped for freshly-squeezed juice--I had pomegranate, Hagar had orange and Ido had carrot--in a newly-revitalized cobblestone plaza with a comical fountain decorated with the signs of the Zodiac.  As we wound our way through the narrow streets past art galleries and shops (many of which were closed for the Sabbath) we tried to go into a small private art museum that we thought was free, but turned out to cost a few shekels.  We decided instead to try to go get something to eat down by the harbor where we would have a water view.

Zodiac fountain in Jaffa (my sign: Leo)

Just as we started to descend a staircase to get down the hill to the harbor, it started to pour down rain.  Luckily the stairway was covered so we hung out there for while until the rain started to let up a bit.  Ido ran out ahead of us to check the menu at the restaurant they were thinking about and then Hagar and I followed him to the place inside a huge old warehouse where we sat at the bar and had a late lunch.  After eating we stopped for sahlab (the hot pudding drink I'd first tried in Jerusalem) at one of the most famous Arabic bakeries in Jaffa.  On the way back to Herzliya, we browsed through the Old Jaffa Railway Station, which had been recently converted into a commercial shopping center.  Most of the upscale shops and boutiques were out of our price range so we weren't really looking to buy anything, but it was neat to peak inside the buildings where some of the original features including a few painted wall murals were preserved.  One stretch of the original train tracks was also preserved and we were able to walk into an old train car where there were old photos hanging of the station in its hay day and later in its derelict state before it was redeveloped.  It was nice to see that the city decided to find a new use for the abandoned buildings instead of just tearing them all down and building from scratch.

Hagar, Ido and me

On Sunday, I was supposed to meet up with my friend, Nate, from the dig, who had just arrived up in Tel Aviv with Esther.  By the next morning, I hadn't heard back from him to confirm our plans so I finally just headed into the city with my laptop since neither of us had phones to check e-mail or call.  I was quite a few hours late for the time we had originally proposed to meet, but I thought I would still try to swing by his hotel just in case he happened to still be there.  I had pulled up directions on my phone and thought I could walk there from the Central Bus Station, but it turned out to be a much longer walk than I had accepted through a not-so-great neighborhood.  I finally found the street I was supposed to be on, but wasn't able to find the actual hotel.  I decided to go to a coffee shop to see if he had e-mailed me back about our plans.

Side street in Jaffa

After walking for a bit in no particular direction (since I didn't have a map) I found a cute little place that had wifi so I plopped down with a cup of tea and checked to see if I had a response from Nate.  So far there was nothing so I waited another half an hour, sent an e-mail saying I was in the e-mail and then decided to walk over toward the beach and find a place a bit closer to the water to try to reconnect.  I had a vague idea of the direction in which to go and on the way I stumbled into the quaint and fashionable neighborhood of Neve Tzedek where the streets are lined with cozy cafes, art galleries and chic clothing shops.  I stopped in a really nice (but expensive) bookstore where I enjoyed browsing through the book titles but couldn't justify the hefty price tags.

As I walked on, I found that I had come out onto the main road not too far away from the Jaffa Railway Station where I had been with my friends the night before.  I crossed the highway and walked along the beach for a while just as it was starting to get dark.  I tried to find another coffee shop to set up camp and wait for Nate, but there only really seemed to be bars, restaurants and hotels right along the main street.  I finally decided to head away from the water and eventually found a cafe near the Dizengoff Center where I was able to get back on my computer.  There was still no news from Nate and so finally after two hours and two glasses of wine (served with complimentary pickled vegetables) I gave up on him and decided to head home for the night.

Old Jaffa Railway Station

I knew the bus station was quite a walk back down south and I didn't want to pay for a cab.  I knew I had to go north anyways to get to Herzliya so I decided to walk to one of the stops along the street we had driven down to get to the station in the morning.  Again I knew vaguely the direction I need to go and figured I would get there eventually.  At one point I started to get concerned that I wasn't going the right way so I took my laptop out and literally sat on a bench outside of a bar so I could pick up their wifi signal and pull up a map.  This was one of the those instances where my phone would have come in really handy.  It seemed I was somewhat on the right track so I kept going until I finally came to a major highway going north and south.  However, when I walked over to the bus stop, none of the bus routes I needed stopped there and since the area didn't look at all familiar I finally decided I need to take a cab back down to the station.

Harbor in Jaffa

As is just my luck, the cab driver who stopped to pick me up didn't speak any English and I further confused him by mispronouncing the name of the town where I was ultimately trying to go.  A passerby who spoke English helped translate into Hebrew that I was trying to get to the bus station.  We agreed on a price and he pulled away from the curb.  Then I started to count my money and (having missed one of the bills in my wallet) suddenly realized that I didn't have enough cash to pay him the whole amount.

At that  exact moment, I saw a sign for the street I had been looking for before and so I asked him to pull over and leave me off right there.  Unfortunately the street seemed to be a major thruway so I asked a woman passing by if she knew where I could get the bus.  She said she didn't know about the bus stop, but pointed out that I could take a train from the station right in front of us.  It was really pure, dumb luck that I had the cabbie drop me off at a train station.  Once I got to Herzliya, I tried to ask some people to show me where to go on my map, but since I wasn't able to get much help from them, I decided to suck it up and pay for a cab back to the house so I wasn't wandering around aimless again.  At least I now know how to get back from the train station!

Mediterranean Sea at sunset

Both of the past two days were pretty much washouts so after staying up late and then sleeping in during the morning, I pretty much just ended up hanging out at the house.  Yesterday I went down the street to pick up some groceries and then planned to walk over to the beach here in Herzliya after eating lunch.  Of course right as I was about to head out the door, it started to rain heavily and I ended up stuck indoors blogging (you're welcome).  This morning it was raining again so I planned to go to a museum after picking up my new phone, which the tracking information indicated had finally made it through customs.

Central Tel Aviv from the beach

We had to go to the post office in person to release the package in person and since the package was sent in Carrie's name she had to come with me.  I'm really glad she did because I don't know if I would have been able to navigate that bureaucracy all on my own.  We kept getting sent back and forth between the mail clerk and customs for reasons I didn't quite understand since everyone was speaking Hebrew.  It didn't help that the woman in customs seemed to be in quite a foul mood and didn't seem to want anything to do with us.  When we got sent back to her for about the third time, Carrie was able to sweet talk her by the end she was sympathizing with me that my phone had been stolen.  She ended up charging me only 15% of the purchase price (as opposed to the assessed value) of the new phone, though I also had to pay a local tax and a customs fee so it didn't turn out to be super cheap.  However, I know without Carrie's help it could have been much worse and at least I know finally have a phone again.

Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv

In the afternoon, Carrie dropped me off at the Eretz Israel Museum near Tel Aviv University.  Like the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem, the Eretz Israel is a big complex with lots of different buildings, though not quite as many the former.  The historical and archaeological museum has displays on stamps, coins, ceramics, glassware and other artifacts.  I started in the philatelic pavilion, which recounts the history of the postal service from the beginning of the 20th century until the founding of the Jewish state.  Though the display was ostensibly about the mail system, it also provided a good history of the various different forces at place and foreign influences in the region up through World War II.  The pavilion also housed two interesting temporary exhibits on photographs from the land of the Bible at the beginning of the 20th century and the history of the ATA clothing factory, which closed after 50 turbulent years of operation in the nascent Israeli state.

Wine press remains at Eretz Israel Museum

From there I move on to the ceramics building where there is a cool reconstruction of a typical house from the biblical era based on evidence from the archaeological record.  By this point I was running out of time before the museum closed so I made a quick swing the Nechushtan Pavilion which had an exhibit on the local copper mining industry and the Hamigdal Gallery where photographs of Yemenite Jews from between 1881 and 1948 were on display.  My last stop was the Man and His Work Center where the traditional tools and production facilities that have been used throughout Israel's history were exhibited.  Unfortunately, the "crafts arcade" where artifacts of each discipline were displayed in situ was closed by the time I went back outside.  In spite of the rain, I think my favorite part of the whole complex was the archaeological remains of olive and wine presses that were on display in the original locations where they had been excavated on the museum grounds.

It was still raining when the museum closed at 4:00pm so I went next door to a cafe for a bite to eat while I waited for it to let up.  Just as I was about to leave, another round of heavy rain came through so I had stay inside for 10 minutes more until it was safe to head to the bus stop.  I was still half a block away when I saw the bus I needed pulling up the the curb, but I was able to make a mad dash and catch it before it drove away.  I guess all that marathon training finally paid off.  While the bus was driving through Herzliya, I thought I'd be slick and get off before we got to the official bus stop as I surmised that it would be a closer walk.  In hindsight I really don't know why I do these thing to myself because I wasn't sure exactly where I was.  I made a decision to just walk straight down the main street and then eventually saw a familiar intersection right near Carrie's house and once again used my impeccable sense of direction (read: dumb luck) to get home.

Note: Once again not yet edited so please excuse errors.  Luckily you are all friends and relatives so I don't think you'll judge me.  Right?  Right?  Oh no, please don't judge me!