Day 18: Meeting Jim in Tel Aviv (June 29)

We'd had so much fun talking to the family from Oakland yesterday and we really wanted to introduce them to Julia (summer connection to Kate, Brown connection to Nick) so we texted and invited them to join us for breakfast.  They mentioned they wanted to visit the Market, so we suggested the same place we had found on our first day in town a week ago.  Good food, good fun, and new friendships.

After breakfast, our major goal of the day was to get back to Tel Aviv.  Jim was flying in around noon and rather than come to Jerusalem for the Sabbath we decided to stay at the same hostel we had stayed in the week before.  I had scheduled us a tour of Masada and the Dead Sea (something Jim really wanted to see) for Saturday, leaving from Tel Aviv. Before we could catch the bus however, Julia needed to get a few things from her dorm.  Wanting to see where she lives, she and I took the light rail up to Mount Scopus.  Then we took the bus back to the market, picked up Rachel, took the light rail to the Central Bus Station, bus to Tel Aviv, and then another bus to the hostel and JIM!  By the time we got there Jim had already been there for a couple of hours and was in his bathing suit ready to go.  I had homework to do - the UCLA extenstion classes I am taking in college counseling started on Monday and I had assignments due - and Rachel wanted to take a shower, so Julia and Jim went and played in the waves, despite the rougher waves than last week and the jellyfish warnings!  Rachel and I went down and met them eventually and saw jellyfish washed up on the shore.


We came back to the hotel to get cleaned up and headed out to dinner.  We walked down a lovely street with lots of options and stopped at an Israeli restaurant.  We ordered a shashuka (our second of the day) and five mezzes and they brought us a sixth to try for free.  Jim loved the smoky eggplant best.

We walked back down to the beach to get some ice cream.  Whatever virtue we had in Spain has totally disappeared...the sky's the limit now.  Oddly though it was only 9 pm many of the ice cream/dessert places were closed.  We found one place where you could combine any of these ingredients with a milk-based product to make your own smoothie/milkshake.  Rachel did a chocolate oreo combo but was told she needed to add frozen fruit to make it frozen.  She added banana.  Her concoction was inedible, so we ended up with ice cream bars from a mini-market before bed.

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