Israel Part II – Officially a Backpacker
We returned to Tel Aviv late on Friday night and crashed at the apartment of Eleanor, one of the Israeli soldiers who was on our Birthright trip. Everyone else who had extended their trip left early on Saturday morning, and Eleanor and I went to the beach.
That day I decided to seriously consider moving to Tel Aviv after my travels. The weather is amazing, it’s right on the Mediterranean, the people are awesome and everyone has cool tattoos, it’s a huge tech hub and they have a lot of start-ups, the going out scene is super fun, and did I mention the beach? Also they randomly have great sushi.
Saturday afternoon I checked into my first hostel of the trip, marking the begining of my solo travels. I spent the evening grabbing drinks with a friend from the US and catching up with my parents and friends.
Sunday I was really looking forward to spending some time alone, since I had been with people pretty much every second for three weeks. I went to the mall and bought Naot (Israeli Birkenstocks), so I’m officially a backpacker now. After that, I rented a bike from the Tel Aviv bikeshare station and biked along the beach to Jaffa. Lucky for me and my questionable biking skills, the bike lanes in Tel Aviv are on the sidewalks.
I got to Jaffa and realized that without Hagai (our Birthright guide) I didn’t know anything about where I was, where I should go, what I should see, or where the bathrooms were. I decided to make my way to a cafe that a friend recomended, armed with a map and instructions from the info booth.
If you’re ever in Tel Aviv/Jaffa, go to Cafe Puaa. Its a super cute restaurant that is entirely decorated with mismatched, thrifted furniture, and the food was GREAT. I had the salmon salad, which was totally not what I expected. It was a bowl lined with creme freche (but it’s a salad so zero calories) and instead of lettuce, the salad base was entirely parsley and cilantro. If you know me at all, you know my love for cilantro. I also thought I deserved a cocktail after my biking excursion, so I ordered arak (kind of like ouzo) with lemon and mint. It tasted like licorice and I didn’t like it much, but I felt too guilty to send it back even though the waiter encouraged me to do so. Finally the bartender came up to me and told me that she was going to make me another drink, and after seeing my grimmance after each sip she had already taken the drink off my bill. I played it safe with a cappuchino.
While I was eating, I wikipedia-ed Jaffa for some context. Jaffa is over 7000 years old, and is an advantageous port and defense post. It was conquered and reconquered, destroyed and rebuilt many times. There are mosques, synogogues and churches there still today, but the buildings that are actually standing are only a few hundred years old. Now the old city serves as a historic landmark for tourists, while new Jaffa has trendy shops, a flea market, and amazing jewelry that I had to talk myself down from the ledge of buying. Damn backpacker budget.
On my way home from Jaffa, I had my first “oh shit” solo traveling moment. I went to the bike kiosk to get a new bike since I had purchased a daily rental, and it said that I was still renting the original bike and couldn’t get a new one. This sucked because A. I had to walk all the way back to my hostel and B. that meant that I had had the bike out for like five hours, which is a $50 charge! When I finally got back to my hostel, the guy working at reception called the bike rental company for me and somehow talked them into only charging me $2 for the 45 minutes I was actually using the bike. We’ll find out if it worked when the charge shows up on my credit card, but shoutout to Itay for helping me!
After that I got happy hour drinks at the hostel bar and dinner with Marta and Marta, my roommates from the hostel. We had the “second best” hummus in Israel (or so the sign said). I thought it was really cool that both Martas were not Jewish, but were vacationing and studying in Israel none the less.
After that we did some bar hopping and then went back to the hostel early.
Monday afternoon I attempted to take public transportation to the airport and completely failed, and had to go back to my hostel to call a taxi. Whoops. Other than that, the trip to Lisbon was smooth. I’m sad I didn’t get to spend more time exploring Tel Aviv, but I’m looking forward to a nice long stay in Portugal!