Beaches and bars in the White City

The beach at Tel Aviv
see all photos »

We spent 3 days in Tel Aviv, enjoying the great beach there (even though it was "winter") and exploring the city. Tel Aviv sprouted as a northern suburb from Jaffa, the oldest port in the world. It soon overtook its ancient neighbor in size and importance.

Tel Aviv is really secular compared to much of Israel, with attractive people walking their dogs everywhere. They have a great bar and club scene. It's a really beautiful city, it reminded us of Toronto as it's comprised of several distinct residential neighborhoods with main commercial strips running through them. It's also protected as a Unesco world heritage site for the thousands of white Bauhaus buildings from the 20's and 30's that are concentrated in the downtown core. Unfortunately for the budget traveller it's also much more expensive than the rest of Israel.

Bauhaus building
see all photos »

From a tourist perspective there isn't really a whole lot to "do" in Tel Aviv, other than roam the neighborhoods and enjoy the beaches and the bars. We hung out with our friend Kalela, who lives in Tel Aviv. She showed us the local bar scene and we talked about  (what else in Israel) politics for a couple of nights.  We also walked around Jaffa for a morning and took a self-guided tour of the Bauhaus buildings. All in all it was a great time, we'd love to come back when its warmer (while the beach was warm enough for us the locals thought it was freezing and stayed at home) and a little more money!