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.