A lot of people (Israelis especially) hate on Tel Aviv, and I guess you can’t really blame them. It’s the beach party, the most modern, international city in a country where history and tradition are tremendously important to the national identity. I was in Tel Aviv last Thursday for Laila Lavan, the annual White Night festival, where the museums stay open late (very cool) and the public squares fill with with teenagers (less cool) who dance til dawn. I’m 23. I’m too young to feel old at a party.
Fortunately, there are section of Tel Aviv where the party-goers (and the architecture) are older. I’m staying at a hostel in Old Jaffa (the Yafo in Tel Aviv-Yafo), which predates its more prominent neighbor by about 3,500 years. My lodging is a ten minute jog from the beach, and I’ve been jogging it every morning since I got here. The Mediterranean water is spectacular after a run in the July sun, and the nearby neighborhood of Florentin has good restaurants and laid-back nightclubs where the average patron—thank God—has her braces off. This, more than Tel Aviv, is my kind of town.
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