Jim was first up this morning and was greeted by two bright green parrots perched on our balcony railing. Unfortunately they were camera shy and flew away immediately. Our first full day was mostly spent doing what Sandy refers to as “nesting”, in other words making the condo feel more homey and user friendly for us. This entailed reorganizing the kitchen to our liking and some furniture rearranging. Sandy also made a list of items we needed to purchase like romantic touches of fresh flowers and candles to light for our evenings at home. Once we were satisfied if felt like home we ventured out to acquaint ourselves with our new “hood”. We are reminded of the differences in architecture we have experienced from Paris to San Francisco to New York and now Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is both very young and very old. The city itself rose from desolate sand dunes just over a century ago while the southern border port of Jaffa was founded around 1600 BC. This is the port where Jonah set out before ending up in the belly of a whale. Tel Aviv literally means hill of Spring as it actually sprang out of a mound of sand. The architecture is extremely eclectic
as some of the worlds leading architects immigrated here in the 1920’s and saw it as a blank slate on which they could practice their innovative and exciting ideas about urban planning. The architecture is primarily functional concrete with a lot of windows and balconies,
to straight lined white Bauhaus
to asymmetric skyscrapers.
It is not a beautiful city but you can find very interesting buildings and neighborhoods hidden within the mundane and decaying.
We are living in Old North Tel Aviv which is a bustling redeveloped old port packed with small shops, restaurants, the Yarkon river
with its adjacent Hayarkon park and great sea views. There is a beach promenade which runs five kilometers south to the port of of Jaffa with an extremely active beach front scene of hotels, restaurants, cafes, exercise stations and a marina with loads of surfers and wind surfers in the water at all times. The river and park just two blocks north run another 10 kilometers east. This is an ideal place for us to run, walk and explore. Sandy is doing quite well with her running
but Jim is still struggling with endurance. We have found that Israel’s leading rowing club, Daniels Rowing Centre, is just one mile away. We are planning on definitely checking this out. Sandy did not get to row on the Seine but she now has a chance to row in Israel and make her coach Ariel proud that she braved the transition from sweeps to sculling as that is what we are planning on doing . . . . . stay tuned, boat mates from CRI.
So our running routes have progressed from the Charles River in Boston to the Seine in Paris to the hills and Pacific Ocean of San Francisco to the Hudson River and Central Park in NYC to the promenade boardwalk along the Mediterranean in Tel Aviv. We have signed up to run the Tel Aviv Marathon 5K in February. Our 26.2 days are over, maybe????
We did go out walking and shopping on our first day stopping at a sidewalk cafe for shakshusha and falafel. The food here is really great.
And finally for those of you who are worried about us here, we feel very safe on the streets of Tel Aviv.
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