The last city before Rica and I head back to Germany – Tel Aviv. We will spend an afternoon, a night and a full day here before heading to the airport to fly back in the evening. After lying on the beach for half a day in Haifa, we pack up our stuff, drive to Tel Aviv, park the car and make our way to our accommodation for the last night. For the first time we are glad to spend only one night here, because the Airbnb is located directly at the beach, but not very nice, clean or recommendable.
De Tel Aviv "Muscle Beach
And that's exactly why we head straight back to the beach again. Our accommodation is located directly at the Tel Aviv "Muscle Beach", and while we lie together with other tourists at the beach and enjoy the sun, we watch others doing sports at the different sports stations. In general, there are quite a lot of people doing sports here, and I briefly get a guilty conscience, because I have done nothing at all for almost two weeks. But hey, I'm on vacation in Israel..
When it gets too cool and we start to get hungry, we go back to the accommodation, get ready and explore the beach promenade. Unfortunately we don't really find what we are looking for – instead of a nice dinner on the beach we eat in a pizzeria in a side street. Afterwards we walk to the beach again to watch the sunset here. We don't really feel like going out for a drink, and just sit for a while before we eventually get too tired.
Frishman Beach
The next day we also start at the beach – but a bit further north at Frishman Beach. Here we spend the first few hours, because we still have the whole day ahead of us, until we have to go to the airport. We are almost the only ones on the beach, maybe because it is a normal Friday morning outside the school vacations. We enjoy the peace and quiet until we have to go back to our accommodation to take a shower before it's time to check out.
Tel Aviv – Jaffa Old City
After showering, we put our bags in the car before walking towards Old City. Always along the water, always with the old city in view. We walk for quite a while, but that's not bad at all, because we are already worried that it won't be so easy to somehow get around the time until the evening without arriving hours too early at the airport. Every now and then we stop and enjoy the proximity to the sea, the view and the sun. When we eventually arrive in the old town, we just let ourselves drift, without really paying attention to where we are walking to. Through a flea market, into different stores, through small alleys, along the harbor, over well-trodden stairs…the Old City in Tel Aviv is quite different from the one in Jerusalem and has somehow similarities with Akko, but somehow also not. We buy some souvenirs, sit down in a small cafe and have a drink. At some point we end up in a small park where we sit down on a bench in the shade and chat, enjoy the view of Tel Aviv and take a few more pictures. We decide what to do now: go back to the beach, sit there for a while, and then stroll around Tel Aviv until it's time for dinner.
Shopping in Tel Aviv
Somewhere near Alma Beach we turn towards downtown, walk through small streets and accidentally come out in a street with different stores. We look at the shop windows, go into one or the other store, browse, try on – and in the end we don't buy anything, because it is simply too expensive. But it's nice to get inspiration and ideas here. So we slowly work our way back to Frishman Beach, through a market that is already being dismantled and where we are allowed to taste different things, past cool street art, to a restaurant where we decide to have pizza for dinner. And after that? Watching the sunset on the beach, chatting until it gets too cold on the beach, buying some breakfast for the flight and off to the car – to the airport. Of course we are still way too early, and pass the time after check in by standing in the endless queue in front of the security check, strolling through the duty free area and sleeping a bit. And then we are already on the plane – back to Germany.
It was the first vacation Rica and I took together, but it certainly wasn't the last. Do you have any tips for Tel Aviv?