We are back in the UK now – our trip was a bit too hectic for blogging. I’ll try and update everything chronologically, although it may take me a little while.

We visited Jaffa a couple of times. It is the original Arab town outside of which Tel Aviv was founded. It has a great cosmopolitan feel and a significant Arab population which makes it and interesting place to explore. Our first experience was a packed hummous place as described previously with a hummous nazi to rival Seinfeld’s soup nazi.

We then wandered (well staggered is a more appropriate description) through Old Jaffa – the ancient part of the town that dates from the roman era. It is a quirky little place of tight alleyways and traditional Arab construction, although it was somewhat controversially cleared of its Arab population and is now occupied by artists their studios. After absorbing the views back over Tel Aviv from the top of the hill in Old Jaffa we investigated the popular flea markets and grabbed a coffee in a fantastic little café with multiple levels, great décor (most of which was for sale) and some very happy smells. Alex forced us to try a central European beef stock jelly which not even the waitress would recommend.

We returned to Jaffa for part of New Years Eve – a party in an old Arab building with great vaulted spaces. The music was trashy but enjoyable (especially after we had worked over the all you can drink bar). Our final trip to one of our host’s favourite areas of Tel Aviv was for dinner on our final night in a great restaurant set in an internal enclosed courtyard of you guessed it… an old Arab building.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under israel, tim, travel log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.