David Sokol Photography: Day 5 - in and around Tel Aviv

All photos at the bottom - I don't have the patience to fight Blogger.

Day 2 of the tour starts with a visit to the old port of Jaffa. It's just down the road from the hotel that I'm staying at and I went there myself before the tour started but it's fun to go back there with the tour. Here you can sit in the midst of a 4000 year history. The buildings and alley ways are spectacular.

Three new people have joined the group today so they get settled in with us as we wonder around the port.

The visit to the old port includes taking us around Jaffa itself and past the flea markets where absolutely everything is offered for sale. It's packed and we don't have the time spend there but it might be somewhere to come back to.

But the main destination today is the Diaspora Museum inside of the precinct of the Tel Aviv University. This is a museum that is dedicated to story of Jews who have lived outside of Israel and what their lives were like (successes and persecution) throughout history as well their contribution to the arts, sciences, literature, and music. The museum is vast and the exhibition a bit overwhelming in terms of information overload in the hour we were there. Bur very well done (a standard of story telling that we are getting used to because every place we have visited has been remarkable).

On the way back we stop at Rabin Square, the place where Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated.

In preparation for Shabbat we only have half a day of formal touring so we are dropped off at the top of Carmel Markets. On top of how busy the market is any day of the week, on Fridays an artisan market is open in the streets around the food part of the market. Since Friday is actually the first day of the weekend here, the square at the top of the markets is full of students, families, shoppers, tourists, and entertainers. To describe it as complete chaos of the best kind would be an understatement. The little video clips that I posted on Facebook and these photos here really don't capture the atmosphere of the place. I need to learn the word for "sorry" because wearing my camera backpack meant that every time I turned to look at something there was carnage behind me!! But no-one seemed to mind; there was so much noise and colour and yet no-one seemed to be too stressed about it. I was hanging out with the Sue and Brian from NZ and we wander through both markets and find somewhere to have lunch. Then we headed back through the markets and I succumbed to buying some nuts. Expensive mistake. Firstly, I finish up with a ton of them because they use unusually large scoops to fill your bag and secondly, we were talking amongst ourselves instead of concentrating - cost of my nuts? 110 shekels (divide that by 3.7 to get Aussie dollars). Ouch!! But we also saw huge containers of fresh bright red strawberries. I wanted she and Sue and Brian wanted some too. Two containers - 10 shekels. Bargain.

I made my own way back to the hotel and had an afternoon nap because we had made a group booking for dinner at a place called Benny's The Fisherman at Tel Aviv port. I remember that I had walked to Tel Aviv port a couple of days ago and I didn't remember it as being that far away (how my memory is failing me!!) So one of the other guys said that he'd happily walk with me and Sue and Brian, who are staying in another hotel on the way, said they'd join us as we were walking. As the booking was for 7:30pm we started walking at 7:00pm.

It sounds so easy in hindsight but we were missing two valuable pieces on information - we hadn't asked our tour guide whether the restaurant was EXACTLY, and we didn't ask his advice about whether normal people would walk there from our hotel. Either one of those questions being answered might have saved us a long and sweaty walk.

Answer to question one - look up Google maps. Easy. It finds the spot. It looks a tiny bit further than I had thought but I just squeezed my fingers together on the screen of my phone to reduce the scale on the display and therefore the distance between where we were and where we were going was like 1cm!! Double easy.

Along the way we fail to see Sue and Brian so we kept going without them. Rick is a power walker from California and so we head off at a leisurely 50km/hr!!! (Well it felt like it). But I was about to witness a part of Israeli life that helps me understand more about what it means to live here. It was dusk and we walking along the main promenade along the beachfront. From the other side of the road we heard the smash of glass breaking and see that a car had collided with a lady on a push bike. The front of his car was damaged and her bike was wrecked. Fortunately for her the car had hit the bike directly, not her. She flew upwards and forwards and landed on her backpack (so that's what they're for - an air bag for bike riders!). We were across a busy divided road so we didn't cross. A crowd had gathered quickly and the woman was helped to her feet. The car driver was shaken and was helped out of the car. Who's fault? It was getting dark. She was dressed in dark grey skirt and black top and had ridden out of a side street. The car driver, on the other hand, did not have his headlights on yet, so didn't see her. What happened next astounded us. They walked towards each other .......... and shook hands. No yelling. No swearing. Just the mutual acknowledgement that they were both ok. Absolutely amazing.

As an aside, I retold this story over breakfast to some people from our tour who didn't join us last night. They said that they'd seen a similarly strange reaction to an accident themselves. They saw the aftermath of a head-to-tail two-car accident. The first thing that both drivers did was, between them, clear the road of any debris (apparently out of respect to other drivers who would drive over the spot that the cars had collided) before moving the cars off to the side to exchange details. Again, no yelling, no screaming, just working together to get the glass and plastic off the road. Something there for us to learn.

Anyway, back to the walk to the restaurant. Google maps said that we still had a bit of a way to go so back to full speed we went. Problem was it was already 7:35pm; we were 5 minutes late and not really near where the map said the restaurant was. Faster, faster, hotter and hotter - we pressed ahead. Getting closer now, in fact it should be at the next intersection. It's 7:50pm but who cares? We arrive. It's a jewellery shop!! Can't be!!! Double check Google Maps. What? It's giving another location now - problem is that it's 150 metres into the Mediterranean Sea! So we find someone who speaks English and ask for instructions. We listen, but I think I know better than the guy who lives in the area!!! I talk Rick into believing me so we cross Independence Park and so we were now back on the promenade side of the park, near the water. Still no sign of the place. Google Maps insists that we walk on water and we'll get there but that doesn't sound like our history's story so we ask for more help. We find a guy from Switzerland and his English is as bad as our Hebrew but he tries to help. He gets his phone and gets into ..... Google Maps .... and confirms that we are exactly where we are!!! Now, that was bloody helpful so we thank him and head off down the promenade (in, as it turned out later, to be in the wrong direction). We come across some Israeli joggers who advise us to walk around to the front of the Hilton hotel and ask there. Good idea, we think. It's 8:05pm - where's the damn search party? The doorman at the hotel says that he knows the restaurant - he says it's about another 25 minutes to walk!!!! He kindly offers to pour us into a cab and instructs the driver to take us to the restaurant. It's 8:15pm when we arrive!!! But the place is pumping and the rest of our group didn't seem to have missed us - even Rick's wife said that she knew we'd get there some time. And dinner was great, although I was still full of nuts and strawberries from the earlier visit to the markets so I only had the mixed dip entrée.

Sue and Michael wanted to walk back to their hotel after the meal and I offered to join them. Funny how it only took 50 minutes to walk back on a balmy night when there was no rush to get to the destination. I'm feeling incredibly safe walking around here - not paranoid about pick-pockets at the markets or muggers out at night. That's the way i was feeling before coming over here. I walked the last 20 minutes home alone last night at 11:00pm and the streets were busy with teenagers either sitting in bus shelters singing or chatting, other teenagers going out to clubs along the way - it was a good feeling.

Feeling wasted when my head his the pillow.