Shabat, 20 January, we are picked up at 9:00 by a tour guide Moshe Frank. We started in our neighborhood of Old North Tel Aviv and drove to the New North, a community of many modern mid-rise apartment buildings as well as the University of Tel Aviv and many museums. We then headed south to Tel Aviv City Hall to view the simple memorial to Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated there in 1995.
The square surrounding city hall is now Rabin square.
We continued south driving by the main library, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the New Israeli Opera and Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center. Moshe told us about Sarona which is a newly renovated complex in the heart of Tel Aviv, originally a German Templar Colony. The site sits at the heart of what is a new central business district of the city, with offices and apartments surrounding the beautifully landscaped complex, in which 33 original Templar buildings dating up to more than 140 years, have been restored, and today house boutique stores, artist galleries, quaint cafes, and some of the city’s hottest restaurants and bars. Opened in early 2014, Sarona has quickly gained a reputation as one of Tel Aviv’s hottest spots. We had visited this area and wrote a little about it in our last post, “Out & about in TLV”. This is where Sandy bought her Union Jack shoes.
Our next destination was Neve Tzedek where we parked and walked for the rest of the tour. This neighborhood is located in southwest Tel Aviv and was established in 1887.
It was the first Jewish neighborhood to be built outside the old port city of Jaffa. Today it is being restored and has become a very avant garde, artsy community.
We ambled the quaint narrow streets and then walked along the seaside promenade boardwalk to Jaffa or Yafo which is the oldest part of Tel Aviv. An ancient port city, it is famous for its association with the biblical stories of Jonah, Solomon and St. Peter as well as the mythological story of Andromeda and Perseus.
Jaffa is also famous in Israel for a sweet, almost seedless orange. Interestingly Jaffa is also a slang term for an impotent or infertile (hence seedless) male.
We wandered up and down the narrow pedestrian only streets of the old city and went to a park which had a beautiful view looking north to Tel Aviv.
We ended the tour by walking through the flea market section of the city which was closed on Shabat. We will return some day when it is open.
