Tel Aviv has a great rental bike program. You can rent a bike for just $4.00 a day, the only requirement is that you do it check it into one of the local stations every 30 minutes. It's not a problem finding a station because they are pretty much every half a mile!
We put the pedal to the metal and started our sightseeing in the Old City of Jaffa. Jaffa is one of the oldest cities in the world, and has been inhabited since 7500 BC. We walked down the narrow alleys and streets and explored. There were lots of art galleries you can peek your head into, and displayed art all over too!
It was in Jaffa that Peter had the vision of a sheet descending with clean and unclean (non-kosher) animals to eat. This was a sign that he was called to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, as well as the Jews. We went inside St. Peters Church...
One of the highlights of Tel Aviv was squeezed between the disheveled streets of the Yemenite Quarter- The Carmel Market. It was one of the busiest streets we have ever been on; it's crowded and noisy filled with vendors hawking everything from knock-off designer accessories to fresh fruits and vegetables.
We loved walking through and looking at all the amazing things people were selling. Here were some of our favorites:
Vegetables
Fruits
Spices
Beautiful teas, check out those rose petals!
Halava, which might I add is one of my favorite things ever. I ate so much of it on this trip!
And fresh baklava (a sweet pastry), which was one of Jordan's favorite things to try!
...mmmm so sweet, it was dripping with honey!
We rode our bikes across town to the Tel Aviv diamond market, where we took a diamond tour in their museum. The metropolitan area of Tel Aviv reminded me a lot of Los Angeles: heavy traffic, lots of cars, and plenty of sky scrapers.
We made it to the Diamond Center!
We learned so much about diamonds, from how people find them, to how they are sold. We have a lot of respect for the people whose job it is to cut and sometimes break the diamonds into the right pieces. Did you know that breaking the diamonds are preferred to cutting them because with a clean break no weight is lost, while when cutting you loose a small amount of mass?
They do have fancy software now to analyze the big stone to see the best way to cut it and get the highest value gems, but it still looks like a lot of work! We got to see a lot of diamonds and learned that half of all the diamonds sold in the United States pass through Israel.
On our way back to the hotel we biked around Rothschild Street
Clearly I am enjoying the weather...
I mean, the sun was pretty amazing hitting all the buildings with the blue clouds!
On Rothschild Street we went to Independence Hall, which was originally the home of Meir Dizengoff, one of the city's founding fathers and first mayor. It was here, in 1948, that David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the state of Israel. We watched a short movie and toured the room where Israel's Declaration of Independence was signed.
We enjoyed ordering pizza at a local pizza shop, can you read any of the signs, because we couldn't?!? No pepperonis, those aren't kosher, luckily "cheese pizza" is a pretty universal saying!
Thin crunchy crust... just the way I like it!
That's a wrap on Tel Aviv, we had a nice time checking out what the city offers-Laila Tov (goodnight), we shall check in again soon after the next stop!
It was a great travel story from Tel Aviv Israel. Very beautiful pictures captured. Love to read your blog. Please share the Hotels in Telaviv has good services
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