Jaffa and Tel Aviv

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Our tour started in earnest today and it was packed with interesting sights. The first stop was Jaffa, a 4000 year old port city. This ancient city was the major entry point into the region and is mentioned in the bible (e.g.., in the Jonah story). Now it is an artisan community with many nice shops. Unfortunately for Fran and fortunately for Tom, we didn’t have too much time to explore them.

The day then centered around Israel’s statehood. The next stop was the Independence Hall where David Ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence in 1948 with three swings of the gavel. And then we moved on to the Palmach Museum - a multi-media 3-D interactive museum, depicting the lives of the Palmach underground male and female soldiers that smuggled Jewish immigrants from Europe into Israel in the 1940s.

Lunch was especially fun on Sheinken Street, the Greenwich Village of Tel Aviv. We ate Israeli sandwiches and shopped in the outdoor crafts fair.

We had dinner along the wonderfully lively, crowded, and exciting beachside promenade. Tel Aviv is on 24/7 - New York is not the only city that never sleeps at night….

It’s amazing to think that Tel Aviv started as a sand dune outside of Jaffa less than one hundred years ago. Now it such a vibrant mix of old and new.

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