I didn’t really know what to expect – aside from nice beaches. We decided to end our whirlwind trip through Jordan and Israel with a couple of relaxing days in Tel Aviv. We took the train from Jerusalem late Friday morning. It took a little longer than a bus, but was a pretty trip.
That night we followed a tip to eat at Santa Katarina and it was well worth it for both the delicious Israeli food and the cocktails! We shared several plates and every one of them was yummmm.
Our hotel was just a couple of blocks from the beach and we spent our first full day there doing absolutely nothing except reading under the parasol on Hilton Beach.
Once we’d showered and napped post exhausting beach day, we decided to stroll down to the old Jaffa port as the sun was setting to grab a bite to eat.
It was a beautiful walk along the coast, and the old port area is quite enchanting. We also stumbled upon a cute and inexpensive little place called Bell Cafe, named after the church bell you can see from a private little balcony where we snagged a seat (just a table for two on it) to eat some delicious hummous.
On day two, we thought we had spent enough time on the beach (okay, really, I could have done another day of laying around…), and decided to walk around the city a bit.
We started with Carmel market, which was busy and bustling, and more importantly was hiding a delicious food truck/stand place that made me the best sandwich of my life – the Iraqi beef kebab w/ burnt eggplant and parsley. For real. I don’t even like sandwiches. Boyfriend got the Arrouk veggie balls, fired eggplant, with herbs and egg. I never eat anything vegetarian (unless it’s cheese related), and I had a bite of it. It was amazing too.
I was stuffed. It was bigger than my face – but sooooo good.
So to walk it all off, we kept going, and it turns out, Tel Aviv has quite a nice selection of street art – which I LOVE!
We ended our trip at a fantastic tapas place near our hotel called Cerveceria. Oooh the grilled shrimp, the asparagus with crumbled manchego and a fried egg, the wings (we had them bring us another order they were so yummy)….sigh. So good.
That was that. The next morning, we headed to the airport to fly back home to Brussels.
Stay tuned for the next post on the Jordan portion of the trip!
Cheers
A-
As a side note... 