Day 12: Tel Aviv (June 23)

Julia woke raring to go, not used to Rachel's more leisurely morning pace.  We had a full day to spend in Tel Aviv before the busses would start running again to get back to Jerusalem.  We looked at the free breakfast in the hostel and decided to try our luck elsewhere.  We stored our bags at the hostel and started our walk along the water down to the Old City of Jaffa.   If you remember two summers ago on the Pacific Northwest trip we were participating in a summer-long scavenger hunt...well it's back!  We spotted two of our items in quick succession - a surfboard and a clock tower.  The girls wouldn't let me go get on a surfboard (extra points!) but we are hoping for extra points for this picture of a surfboard with a clock tower in the background!

The walk was long and the sun really took it out of us - well, me and Rachel.  Julia has adjusted it seems and didn't really understand what we were complaining about.  We went to a great place for breakfast  - Cafe Puaa. Gone are the days in Spain of just simple toast, tea, and juice for breakfast - we had goat cheese with roasted tomatoes, and egg sandwich, a french toast with spiced apples dish, and a pitcher of mint lemonade.  All delicious.

Afterwards we walked up into an old town square past the House of Simon and circled St. Peter's Church trying to find an entrance - it was closed for the mid-day, so we wandered down towards the port and oddly enough on a very random street ran into Julia's two suite mates who were also in Tel Aviv for the day.  The day before we had randomly run into a person from Brown who is also in Jerusalem for the summer - so now I've met all three people Julia knows in Israel.

We walked aimlessly and came probably my favorite piece of street art I've ever seen. I loved the mosaic from across the street and was super surprised when I got closer to see it was made entirely of bottlecaps!

Our next stop was to be the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.  All of our wandering had led us even further away from it, so we looked for a taxi but struggled to get one to stop for us.  After about an hour of walking and trying to flag one down, we decided to embrace the walk which would take us another hour but thankfully a taxi driver decided to take pity on us.  It was very difficult to communicate with him where we wanted to go; eventually Julia mapped it into his phone.  We were worried since he didn't seem to know what it was that we were going to an obscure location, but as the title implies it was a huge art museum holding a ton of Jewish Modern Art (makes me feel stupid that I just don't get it) and (thankfully) a lovely collection of impressionist paintings.  I was admiring a couple of pieces when the security guard in the room came up and started discussing what makes the art I liked so special.  It was the first time in any museum I've been in that the security person seemed to be an art expert.  I guess he has spent a lot of time looking at these paintings.

From the art museum, we headed to the 4:30 showing of Ocean's 8 at a local mall that was mostly closed on a Saturday.  We had to wander searching for the entrance until a group of young kids showed us the way. When I asked them how to get in, they seemed concerned that I too might be carrying a skate board and I would be turned away (as apparently they were).  I assured them I thought we would pass through security just fine. 

We picked up the bags at the hotel, got in a shared taxi to the bus station (turns out we could have easily avoided that walk yesterday), and found the gate out of which our bus was going to leave, we thought at 7:45.  Our plan was to return to Jerusalem and eat dinner there as the city was reopening after sundown. The first bus didn't actually leave until 8:45 pm (when the sun actually set) but once we figured that out we were first in a growing line of people waiting, so had to stand there and wait.  By the time everyone was done cutting in front of us (going through the door that it said to wait behind) and pushing us out of the way, we were concerned that we might not even get a spot on the bus.  I got more assertive as it got more ridiculous.  Thankfully, two busses showed up in short succession and we just got on the second (but still had to push our way on). 

Once in Jerusalem, Rachel was really wanting to find some hummus for dinner, but most of those restaurants near the market were still closed.  We had a choice of burgers or pizza and chose burgers. The veggie burger was so real (and delicious) that Rachel couldn't even eat it - it freaked her out.  We ended the night with an ice cream sandwich with waffles as the cookies - it cost 38 shekels (over $10!).  I've found Israel super expensive.  After 10 days in Spain, it is hard to readjust to regular prices, and Israel is pricier than the US.