Shalom from Tel Aviv-Yafo!

On March 15 we visited Tel Aviv's historic neighbor, Yafo, and then parted company for a few hours, while I uploaded the webpage and Adam updated Bank Leumi's operations department on, well, bank operations (Adam's a consultant for the Corporate Executive Board in Washington, D.C.).

On this, our first full day in Israel, we awoke early (we had gone to sleep at 9 p.m., so arising at 7:15 a.m. was actually quite reasonable, though for us--and for a vacation in general--it is unusually early).

The hotel breakfast consisted of herring, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, green peppers, cottage cheese (Adam had the cottage cheese, not I, as my family guessed). Afterwards, we called my Institute colleague Ze'ev Schiff and learned from his wife, Sarah, that he had already left for Jerusalem. Then we called Granny's friends, Dina and Akiva Ilan, and made some plans for when we visit Akiva in Jerusalem; Dina was about to leave for the States, to visit their children and their new grandchild, and Akiva had planned to leave about two weeks later. After making those plans, Adam called his office in D.C. (would you believe calls to the States are only about 20 cents per minute! What a deal!) and then called Bank Leumi, to make plans for that afternoon. (While I spent that afternoon uploading our first cybertour page, Adam gave a presentation to some of the operations people at the bank, somewhere out near the airport.)

Anyway, after making all those plans, we took the #10 bus down Ben Yehuda street and went to Old Yafo (Jaffa) for the morning.

The picture to the left is actually a view of Tel Aviv (and me) from Yafo. We took a lot of pictures and mostly just walked around, read from Fodor's, and read the various tourist information signs by the port or by the archeological digs.

And we saw a lot of cats (see one example, below).

Which of course reminded us of the story I originally thought was Granny's, about when she and Grandpa once visited Jerusalem, and they asked their friends, "How do you call a cat?"

To which their friends responded, "Why would you want to call a cat?"

(After I put that comment on the original page, Adam's sister, Ruth, wrote to say it was actually the family friends, the Katz family, who asked this when they first went to Israel. All the more appropriate because of the surname. Oh, and someone also wrote to ask how do you call a cat, but I can't remember the Hebrew--and besides, as the joke goes, who would want to?)

OK, for cat lovers, that's not funny, but there really are cats all over the place here, and dogs too, to be honest, but at least the dogs are on leashes and people actually own them. (Adam's quite happy about that, because all the dogs are quite big!)

The picture to the left is of Adam in one of the old alleys of Yafo.

Old Yafo is a great little touristy area, and it reminded me of Antibes on the Cote d'Azur, in France, except that instead of having all sorts of Provencal artisan weaving and pottery, it had shops with tallit and silver menorahs and paintings of the Old City!

It was clearly the off-season, as many of the stores were closed. But it was fascinating to walk around, and to realize the buildings, if not the stores themselves, were hundreds if not a thousand or more years old!

I'm glad we had Fodor's with us, because it recommended a little pita stand that had a great snack, za'atar, which is sort of like a marjoram-flavored pesto, on a toasted pita. Mmm!

(The picture to the left is of Adam buying shtayim za'atar (two pitas).

Then we walked around the Arab souk in Yafo and saw Persian-style rugs, brass hookas, lamps, lace, and all sorts of tchotchkes.

We then took a bus back uptown to Tel Aviv and went to another place recommended in Fodor's, which was supposed to have authentic Eastern European food. Kosher and everything. It was quite good; I had the chopped liver and a bowl of kneidlach soup, and Adam also had a bowl of soup and a chicken schnitzel (basically, chicken tenders). As one of my coworkers asked after we got back, "Why would you go to an Eastern European restaurant in Tel Aviv?" Well, because it was good, and as we later learned, one can eat only so much hummous, pita, and falafel.

After lunch, we walked to InBar, Tel Aviv's internet bar, owned by a man whose last name, appropriately enough, is Inbar (though we didn't discover that until we returned on our last night in Israel). I bid Adam adieu for the afternoon and began typing away and watching the world go by.

By the time I finished it was nearly rush hour, or at least it seemed that way (there were many more cars on the road). I had been there about two and a half hours; I had to read all the email before I did the page, after all, and it took longer to upload the original verson of this page than I expected (probably in part because I didn't know what I would write; you can probably tell from looking at the original).

I therefore made the resolution to plan what I would write, but that didn't happen; in fact, Adam ended up doing most of the writing of the original pages, simply because it allowed me to focus on the technical aspects of coding the HTML. But I will get into such issues more on a later page.

Part of the problem was also the keyboard, which does have the English letters on it, but which also has the Hebrew in red (as you can see). It's a good thing that, for the most part, I know the keyboard (and it's a very good thing the keys are all in the same place, unlike Italian and French keyboards; using an Olivetti in Italy was one of the more difficult experiences of my writing life).

And, we took the following picture to reassure Granny that we got her messages; the rest of our virtual tourists received "reply" messages, so they knew I got their missives, but it would have been too difficult to teach Granny how to receive email as well. Thus, we simply wrote something in each day's entry in response to whatever message Granny had sent, so she would know that we got it.

(Also, when Rebecca wrote, we realized we could send her an email so she could tell Granny that we got her messages; why we didn't simply spend the 20 cents and call the States, I can't say, but that would have taken some of the fun out of it, I think.)

We were quite amused to hear from Jerry Sorkin, Adam's former boss, as well as from our brother-in-law's parents (they were visiting Ruth and David's place, and R&D showed David's folks the webpage, apparently). It's nice to have such loyal "fans"!

As I was finishing this page, and it grew dark, and I began to feel a bit hungry, Adam returned from his meeting at Bank Leumi.

After I finished the preceding part of the page, I went to Hotmail and found four more messages online waiting for us; I guess the East Coasters had finally woken up!

Here are the pictures of the people who helped me out at the InBar. Their names are Hadas and Eran (Hadas is the woman), and they were really cool and interested in my "project."

Eran was fascinated by my camera, so I took another picture of him and Hadas before we left for the hotel and then to dinner at a great Indian restaurant (also recommended in Fodor's), Tandoori.

This picture is for Adam's friend Victor: Apparently "A Bug's Life" has been translated into Hebrew, quite literally, according to the title.

We also saw many ads for Prince of Egypt, though of course they were really in Hebrew (something about Mizrayim, but neither Adam nor I knew the word for "prince").

We included this photo for Granny; I remembered her story about how she and Grandpa went into an Israeli bank and were surprised by the IDF soldiers with their uzis; well, I had the same feeling on the bus, and I gather that Adam did too.

I wasn't sure whether I should have feel more secure seeing so many young men (boys, practically, and of course young women--girls--too) walking around with such big guns, or whether I should have felt more scared!

The other ubiquitous sight was Israelis with cellphones. On the bus to Yafo alone, we saw (heard) three elderly women and one older man get cellphone calls. Talk about a connected society!

Another thing I didn't want to forget to mention, that Adam and I thought was funny, was the walk signs in Tel Aviv.

They are walking in the opposite direction of the little green men in American walk signs.

Perhaps because Israelis read right to left, they see themselves walking that way too?

And, finally, an image of Dizengoff Square, which we took on our last evening in Israel because we didn't have our camera with us when we first passed it on our way to Tandoori on our first day there. We liked the fountain, so we thought we would include it here.

And so ended day 2 of our cybertour (March 15).

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Last updated July 2, 1999.