Israel Part 1

Greetings everyone and welcome to the triumphant return of our adventure blog. Mirav and I just got back from one of our biggest adventures ever. We spent a grand total of 3 weeks on vacation in Europe, they call it holiday over there. I have just shy of 1200 pictures from the trip and we did so much that I am going to have to break this into multiple entries. 

First Stop Israel!

Israel is 10 hours ahead of Portland so including layovers, flights and the time change we landed in Tel Aviv about 34 hours after we left our house. Luckily, my lovely wife was clever enough to use our miles to upgrade us to business class on the 11 hours flight from Philidelphia to Tel Aviv. 

Some shots of us embarrassing ourselves in front of the other business class passengers who always fly this way. 

Despite the fully reclining business class seat, I did not sleep well. I have zero pictures of the first 24 hours we were in Tel Aviv because I had trouble figuring out where I was most of the time. I fell asleep on the couch twice before dinner. It took us some time to rally our strength.  

The next day we went over to the market. This place was crazy. It was like going back in time. These little shops are crammed together, like hundreds of shops. They go on forever and there's people everywhere.

A dude at the market was selling 7 shekel ($2) falafel. He just kept yelling, seven shekel falafel! Then he would yell seven in like 10 different languages. I had to get one. He made it in less than 40 seconds. It was pretty legit. I'm thinking the profit margins on these can't be great, he must do a lot of volume. 

Before dinner we took a walk down to the beach and watched the sun set. The beach in Tel Aviv is amazing. We were staying with Mirav's cousin Hila. It takes about 5 minutes to walk to this beach from her place. Not bad huh? 

After the beach, we went to a pretty trendy tapas place and had dinner and drinks. I apparently don't have any pictures of that either. Then Hilla made us walk home 3 km and Mirav wrecked her feet because she was wearing brand new flats. Poor decision. 

Mirav wasn't feeling well the next morning so she missed our trip to the beach. It wasn't even 10am and it was already really hot. The water was so nice though, it's not cold like the pacific. Some little fish kept biting our feet. Apparently it's a spa thing in Thailand to let this kind of fish bite you. Pass.

Hila took us to this insanely good humus place for lunch on our way to Jaffa. This place only serves combinations of humus in bowls. You get a soup bowl full of humus, a stack of pita and half an onion. It was amazing. We need one of these places in Portland. 

Turns out I don't have many pictures of the actual city of Jaffa. It was so hot that I couldn't think. It was about 1PM and pushing 100 degrees at this point. This is the view from the city back out to Tel Aviv. The building on the left jutting out into the water is roughly where the beach was that is close to where we were staying. 

 I snuck into some picture to prove I was on the trip

This it what a lot of Jaffa looks like, It's hard to tell what is old and what is new. Some of it is a thousand years old, some is brand new but it all looks the same. 

On the way to dinner we walked passed four couples getting wedding pics taken. For the record, it was Tuesday at 2PM. I guess it's not traditional to have a bridal party in Israel. So you have unofficial people who try to match each other and apparently dress like prostitutes. 

Some views of us walking down the street. From what I can gather this is sort of a hipster area. 

All of Tel Aviv was crazy. Everything is so crowded and lively. It's like there are no rules. You can drive, park or walk where ever you want. You can see the scooter on the left just parked on the sidewalk. It was not uncommon for a scooter to hop the curb in front of you while you are walking for someone to park. Also, all the people on scooters wore helmets, but the also wore flip flops and tank tops. So, you know, safety first. 

It was trash day and this is how they get rid of cardboard for all the little shops. There's no room for dumpsters so they just throw it in the street and someone comes by later and gets it. 

We met up with Omri and had dinner at a great local place. The menu was entirely in Hebrew so someone ordered for me. It was delicious even though I'm not exactly sure what it was. This pup was waiting patiently by the kitchen in hopes of getting sympathy scraps. 

That was the end of day 4 of the trip. Still have a TON of stuff left to write for ya'll. It was a very long and full trip. We are still recovering from it.