Tel Aviv Day!

We were lucky to get a native tour of Tel Aviv on our second Day in Israel. Dovi and Gaby took us to the Shuk, or market, in Tel Aviv in the morning and we walked past dozens of fresh fruit and veggie stands and cheese and olives in abundance! Martin bought a baseball cap to keep his head from turning red and we walked along the streets past colorful cafes to one that Gaby enjoys. I think they had the absolute best apple pie.cake I've ever tasted. The day was perfectly clear and the spring trees were all blooming. It was lovely.
We went into several shops, including Michal Negrin's shop. This is the same woman whose jewelry I wore at our wedding. She does wonderful kind of romantic pieces but very hip. If you went to my wedding you might remember. Anyway... for lunch Dovi took us to possibly the yummiest falafel stand ever. It was all you could eat and they had all sorts of yummies like fried potato slices, pickled eggplant, olives and sauces. It was yummy. We also wandered around Dizengoff Street and Dizengoff Center and had a yummy frozen lemonade with mint leaves.
After walkeing around most of the day, Dovi took us through the rest of Tel Aviv by car and around the beaches to see some interesting sights. Tel Aviv is very modern and very spread out, with some huge skyscapers to boot! We pulled over at the beach to watch kayakers and the clubs getting ready for the evening. One place had tons of white block furniture on the beach with colorful throw pillows everywhere. I couldn't imagine a place like that in Pensacola or even Daytona Beach.
That evening we met almost all of Martin's other cousins for coffee at a place called Cup O' Joe in Bat Yam. Liat was there and so were Gabys and Dovi's sons Guy and Emit and their wives. Emit is very religious and doesn't look at women, which was kind of weird, but whatever. Guy works for El Al like his father and so they could talk to Martin about airline stuff. It was very nice to meet everyone even if there was a slight langage barrier.

Day Three- Israel At Last!

We arrived at about 345AM in Tel Aviv. The airport has recently been redone and it was gorgeous. I had nothing to compare it to, but it was very spacious and light. We rented a car from Eldan rental care, basically a Mazda 323 called a Lantis. We got maps and headed to Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, where Martin's cousins live. (Bat Yam means daughter of the sea, I love that). We found the place to meet Martin's cousin after only one wrong turn and we sat in the car, very jet lagged from no sleep on the plane, and waited for about an hour while the sun came up before we called Martin's cousin Dovi. He drove to meet us and we met his wife Gaby and sat talking for a about hour before we decided that we should get some rest. We took a nap until noon and then woke up to eat a marvelous lunch of burekas, pitas and hummus and everything yummy and Israeli. The good thing to remember is that we got to end Passover a day early since we were in Israel.
After we showered and ate, we took a ride about 5 minutes up the road to Old Jaffa, a wonderful town between Bat Yam and Tel Aviv that is a historically important town and has wonderful architecture and winding, steep streets full of artisan shops and restaurants. We wandered around and took pictures up the coast of the gorgeous coastline.
After wandering around Jaffa, we took a wild ride back to Bat Yam and went to the local mall for coffee and to look at the shops. It was a three story mall with lots of great shops and food places. I bought a few things and then we went to meet Martin's other cousins, Moshe, Ahuva and Liat, for dinner at their apartment.
They fed us very well and were very happy to see us! The food was again, very yummy and we talked about their travels and we told them about ours. We looked through photo albums and looked at momentos of their trips to the US. It is interesting that in Israel, instead of a Senior portrait for high school, everyone gets a picture in the army with a big uzi.