Day 2 - Soak in the rays, but not too many

6/19/2013 tringel 0 Comments

Day two - Jaffa, Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv Beach, The Hall of Independence, Kikar Rabin, and a Night out in Jerusalem. That is a lot of stuff in one day but it was packed full of fun. And if you have scrolled through this post briefly you will see there are tons of pictures. But let me note this is only the tip of the iceberg. I narrowed these chosen 24 from almost 100 pictures I have from this day. But if you want to see them all feel free to check out my Facebook, the whole album is up there.

So, since there are so many photos, I am going to try to let them speak for themselves and do a little less explaining through written word on this post. We began by journeying through Jaffa where we saw a few significant landmarks. Later (this is the only picture out of order) we went to the Hall of Indepenedence, where Israel first declared there freedom as its own country. From right to left is the Hovering Orange Tree, The Statue of Faith representing Jacobs dream, the sacrifice of Isaac, and the fall of Jericho, and then (left) id the inside of the Hall of Independence with a photo of Ben Gurion and to flags of Israel.







We then got to the port and saw boats, people fishing, and the town from the port.



After that we were able to ave a few hours on the beach. One of my favorite parts. We swam in the Mediterranean Sea. The water was so nice, not like the Atlantic or Pacific where no matter how hot you are the water is still brutally cold. This water was refreshing and clean. The waves got to be pretty big but were calm at the same time. I also had my first Israeli falafel in a pita for lunch today. So delicious! We also saw a man collecting bottles on the beach, I am guessing to get money back. But he was not like people in America he would sit very close to us and stare until we were done drinking from our bottles and then scream at us if we tried to recycle them ourselves. We later saw him peeing on the beach. Very attractive... But as I said the beach itself was beautiful. They even had coverings and chairs laid out for anyone to use free of charge. I applied tons of sunscreen because I did not want to get burnt and feel miserable the rest of the trip. And although I tried to protect myself my shoulders still got some red, although I was not the worst burn in the group (and you may be happy to know it is now a nice tan color...after some peeling).



It was awesome that they had bike lanes throughout the city too. And bike traffic lights along with the walk signals and regular traffic lights. It seems like they take biking seriously here. No more getting hit by cars for me. I was also in love with their recycling bins. I saw them all over. Who wouldn't want to recycle when it is painted with flowers in such fun colors?





 

After the Hall of Independence we briefly went to Kikar Rabin, followed by dinner at the hotel and time to change for our night out! We stayed in Jerusalem this noght so our night out was in Jerusalem. It was quite an interesting experience. As soon as we got the "the strip" bartenders were offering free shots and hooka to get us to come to their bar. You could haggle everything. We went to a bar offering free shots with the purchase of  drink but we told them we had better offers else where so they upped the anti. There were soldiers walking around too, like any normal person out drinking...with large guns.  We had to leave around 1am though since we had a very early morning, and according to the locals, the night doesn't start until 1am or later. But we had a 45 minute walk back since our bus driver was limited on the amount of hours in a row he could work, and I was glad to see me bed!




And that was basically day two, long but fun! Feel free to comment if you have any questions or want more details about anything, I am happy to expand. :)