$$$, Jaffa, and Crazy Shlomo (the bike guy)

The food, like everything in Israel, is very expensive. Israel is something like the 13th most expensive city in the world (for reference New York is 23rd). A single roll of Bounty paper towels cost $6 here. Breakfast is easily $13 no matter where you go. I haven't noticed gas prices because we've only been walking, riding bikes, and taking cabs (also expensive).

One thing that isn't expensive is produce. I haven't been to the outdoor markets yet, but they are apparently very cheap. But judging by the fact that you get loads of tomatoes and cucumbers at every restaurant, I would imagine they are easy to come by. Olives are also plentiful here.

There are also some things that are commonplace here that would seem like luxuries in the US. For example, just about every single house/apartment has these automated shutters that open and close at the touch of a button that are completely room-darkening. I don't use them that often because I'd never wake up in the morning, but they're great for a nap. The apartment also has zone heating/cooling so you can target the temperature for whatever room you're in and a bidet and toilets like you see in Japan with the different buttons for flushing a little or a lot. No other bells and whistles like Japanese toilets sometimes have, but who needs those anyway?

I just checked the temperature in DC and it was 37 degrees. It's 75 here. I'm not complaining. I'm sitting at a cafe right now looking out at the water. The sun's going to set in about an hour and a half and I plan to walk on the beach a bit before it does.

I recently took a walking tour of Old Jaffa. Jaffa was the original city before Tel Aviv came to be and it is gorgeously situated right on the water. The city has been there since many many years BC, but Napoleon destroyed it all, so what you see today has been rebuilt since that time. And even some of those buildings are restorations. In some places they have preserved old Roman ruins and other archeological digs, and today there are artist shops in the old part of town.

The newer part of Jaffa is not as nice and it's where you go if you want to get something cheaper than you could in Tel Aviv. After quite an adventure at the bike shop there, I picked up a full suspension bike. In the US, the bike shop would have been a law suit waiting to happen. A metal rack on which at least 10 bikes hung when we entered the shop (which was little more than a 2-car garage type room with two separate rolldown doors) started to fall down. So various workers came from all over the place piling bikes outside and on the other end of the room and some guy started spot welding the rack back up. Sparks were flying and the proprietor was still selling bikes. At one point we were in one half of the garage room and they rolled down that door and almost trapped us in by piling bikes in the narrow pathway between the two halves of the room. A pesky foreigner offered to 'translate' for us, but the shop owner spoke better English than he did. He had one of those lame cycling outfits on and warned us against touching his bike because it was expensive. Then some other guy started sawing into the metal causing more sparks to fly. People were shouting in a few different languages, customers coming in and out, workers moving, repairing, and selling bikes. All in all, I am glad we got out of there with a bike and no serious injuries.


Here are some pics. I included a video of bats we saw living in this abandoned building in Jaffa.

View of the Tel Aviv coast from Jaffa.

View from museum at end of tour.




Feral cats can be really cute.









Bat video...