Friday, January 29, 2010
My Best Day
Downtown Tel-Aviv
I'll be honest, and though I may change my mind in the future I'd have to say that today was the best day ever! Why, you ask? Well, today I went to Jaffa. Jaffa is a formerly independent city which was absorbed into southern Tel Aviv as that city grew, hence the official name of the city, "Tel Aviv-Yafo". Anyway, I woke up this morning intending to go for a run and promptly fell back asleep. (I'd been up until 1 AM the night before at a too small, too smoky club which unfortunately ended up being full of skeazy, 30-something Israeli dudes).
By ten I was finally able to get myself up and ready to go downtown with my fellow BU Engineers. When we finally had gotten off at the bus stop we weren't even in Jaffa yet but the view just pulled us off. Before us was the rocky coastline of the shores of the Mediterranean, to the south lay the 7,500 year-old port of Jaffa outlined on a hill, to the north was the hotel-lined beaches of Tel Aviv, and above was a cloudless, 75 degree sky. It. Was. Awesome. After taking this all in for a few minutes and taking several hundred photos apiece, we began walking along the shore towards Jaffa. When we reached the main area I could tell this place was very different from most of Tel Aviv. Most of the buildings were quite old, one to two stories tall and made of stone which had slowly been worn down over the years. There were even a few minarets around, reminders of the substantial Muslim population in Jaffa.
A street in Jaffa
It being lunchtime, we made our way into a restaurant called "DR Shakshuka" where we were lead out into and seated in an outdoor section shaded by loose, green cloth hung between two buildings. "Shakshuka" is a traditional Israeli/North African dish made of poached eggs in a tomato sauce with peppers and spices. Though I'm not normally a fan of poached eggs I'm always curious about cultural foods so I ordered shakshuka with veal. It wasn't exactly a beautiful dish, but I could tell it was one of those recipes which were cobbled together over centuries by utilizing easily available, local ingredients as a means of serving one need: sustenance. Not to be aromatic, not to look pretty, not to impress others, but simply to feed. I've come to learn that these are some of the best meals to order while immersed in another culture and the shakshuka did not disappoint, especially when paired with the homemade lemonade mixed with a bit of mint.
Shakshuka with Veal
After lunch I met up with my friend Ian who had come to help me find a cheap bike in Jaffa. For the past several days I have been looking to find a bike as a means of getting around without having to pay the 5.80 shekels to take the bus all over. Ian, who is pretty knowledgeable when it comes to אופניים (offanayim) as well as haggling in Hebrew, had bought a bike a few days earlier, albeit a $300 one, and had heard the cheapest bikes could be found were here. So we began poking around the local flea market which turned out to be full of junk and was later directed by a local to a "bike shop" down the street. It actually was just two open metal sliding doors on a God-knows-how-old building with a pretty wretched-looking, yellow spray-painted bike frame mounted above it. And that was just the outside. As we came close we were beckoned by an old-ish, toothless-ish man sitting in a lawn chair across the small street holding a bottle of Heineken. My friend whipped out his Hebrew skills and told the man we were looking for a bike at which point he told us to take a look inside, pull one out which we liked and that we would talk about it then. The inside of the shop was full of so much junk it was hard to move around in the small room. There were broken stereos, old pots, bird cages and rusty refrigerators strewn among piles of bicycle wheels (obviously stolen) and bike seats (also obviously stolen). Among this heap we did manage to find a decent full bike and wheeled it out to talk price. Though we had told the proprietor I was willing to pay 200 shekels for it, after Ian had been conversing with the Israeli man who was speaking slurry Hebrew for a few minutes he offered it to me for 150 shekels, roughly $40. It was a steal, which was ironic because the bike itself was most likely stolen. But hey, me deciding not to buy it wouldn't un-steal it so why not?
The "Bike Shop"
Following this success I picked up a decent bike lock at the flea market and we were on our way back to Tel Aviv. With the sun getting lower in the sky, Islamic calls to prayer boomed out of loudspeakers mounted on the nearby minarets as we began riding north along the coast. Up to this point I had never noticed how bike-friendly Tel Aviv is. Riding along wide sidewalks by the beach wasn't difficult at all thanks to the bike lanes. The weather was amazing so I had to stop several times to take pictures of the blazing sun lowering itself over the Med. Further down the boardwalk Ian and I came upon another great find forthe day, a weekly fruit and vegetable market. All the stuff was fresh and local so we made a mental note to come back earlier in the day next Friday. Not after making some purchases, that is. Needless to say I now have a "dragon fruit", a fruit I had never previously heard of, is ridiculously purple on the inside, tastes a bit like mushy watermelon, and according to Wikipedia, consumption of which may result in "a harmless reddish discoloration of the urine and faeces". As a guy, I'm pretty curious about that last part. After the market we finished our ride back to the dorms and here I sit, recounting this great day. I walked around an amazing part of the city with an amazing history in amazing weather, ate awesome local food, got a cheap stolen bike thanks to the inebriation of its owner, biked alongside a beautiful vista, and picked up a fruit which may or may not make me pretty stoked a few hours from now. This was the best day.
Sunset on the boardwalk
My big victory
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
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1 comments:
you're trip sounds pretty amazing so far. you'll have to let us know how that dragon fruit turns out...
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