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This is Tel Aviv
By Amy Rosen
Enroute Magazine
Israel’s metropolis is one of the world’s
great beach cities. And party towns. And design centres. Really.
Bauhaus architecture over
here, falafel and surfing over there. Tel Aviv is becoming one of the best
beach cities in the world – no matter how you look at it.
I’ve been here before. It’s not a case of
déjà vu; I’ve actually been right here in this exact sandy spot.
Everything in Tel Aviv may be changing around me, but this much I remember
for certain.
It’s the area just before Old Jaffa, where
the silky and sun-drenched beaches become a little bit cliffy and the usual
warm liquid embrace of the Mediterranean turns a little more churny. You’re
not supposed to swim here. There are signs in Hebrew with big red circles
and diagonal lines through them that say so. No lifeguards are on duty, and
the undertow is dangerous. Which is precisely why people come here to surf.
Not because it’s dangerous but because of the waves. This is where the
Mediterranean comes to die. And it’s also where, after swallowing 20 litres
of sea water that day, I finally stood up on the surfboard and rode my very
first wave. This is the place where, over a decade ago, my Israeli boyfriend
taught me how to surf.
We later celebrated on the beach with hot
falafels and sticky Cokes and then spent the better part of an hour letting
the saltwater drain from our sinuses onto my 20-shekel towel. It was both
painful and beautiful, our sun-baked bodies covered in sand and the warm
water dripping from our noses. Come to think of it, it might have been one
of the best days of my life.
Tel Aviv has an undercurrent of its own.
It’s a place with deep religious roots and raucous bars that don’t close.
It’s a town in a nation where the people are known as Sabras – prickly on
the outside but sweet within. It’s a city of indescribable beauty but
pockmarked by the ravages of a turbulent past.
Yet unlike the riptide near Jaffa, it’s not
a place to fear.
“In Jerusalem you pray, and in Tel Aviv you
play,” says Irit, my guide for the first couple of days of my trip. “Tel
Aviv is a combination of entertainment, food, architecture, beach,
nightclubs; it’s all in one place.” Irit, thirtysomething, pretty and
petite, lives in Jerusalem but likes to visit Tel Aviv for fun.
As we stroll the tree-lined Rothschild
Boulevard with its smart-looking sushi and coffee kiosks, shops and green
spaces, she explains that this was the very beginning of the modern Tel
Aviv. “Ben Gurion, Dizengoff – these are the kinds of people who started
building it.” Most of the austere Bauhaus buildings are white and square
with balconies and wooden shutters. Many are renovated; some are under
construction. Others are crumbling, yet to be touched. All are squat and
functional. This is a city designed around public spaces – a garden city
built to bring people together.
Truth is, no area is ever deserted in Tel
Aviv, so there’s a real sense of security. A walkable metropolis, it’s meant
to be traversed by foot. It’s also a living museum. With over 4,000
villa-style Bauhaus buildings, the largest concentration of its kind in the
world, the White City of Tel Aviv was recognized by UNESCO as a World
Heritage Site in 2003. Parks and promenades, schools and residential areas
are all tightly knotted together.
We make our way through the boisterous
Carmel Market and on to the ancient port of Old Jaffa, once the gateway to
Israel. Napoleon even stayed here. Today it’s the gateway to cool. Like
every hip area, first came the artists. Ilana Goor’s little enclave, with
its authentic limestone building, eaten by years of sea salt, houses a
museum, work studio and rooftop café. Curvy narrow alleys are everywhere,
with lots of ancient steps and even more feral cats skulking about. Today is
Tuesday, “the best day for a Jewish wedding,” explains Irit, “because in the
book of Genesis, God said, ‘It was good’ twice.” There are, in fact, so many
young couples having their wedding photos taken, it’s as if we’re caught up
in the middle of a meringue-dress swarming.
Early afternoon in the lobby of my hotel, a
gaggle of tourists is eating mousse nougat bombs and poppyseed pie while
comparing notes. “Last time we were here was 1964,” declares the woman with
frosted hair and oversize sunglasses, the gold chain around her neck
sporting a dangling Star of David. “And I can’t believe it; in three days, I
haven’t seen one thing that’s the same!” (I mean, honestly lady, the Six Day
War hadn’t even happened.)
Up until the late 1980s, Tel Aviv was a
massively provincial town, and as a 10-year-old tourist, I remember there
being nothing to do here but build sandcastles and visit historic sites
built almost exclusively from crumbling limestone. And the ice cream was
vanilla and gross. There was little food culture, and fashionable people
bought their clothes abroad.
So I share the tourist’s sentiment. In the
past few years, even the skyline has changed dramatically. The Philippe
Starck-designed Yoo project – two gleaming high-rises in north Tel Aviv’s
wealthy Zameret Park – is big stuff for a city built on Bauhaus. Steak
houses and sushi have also reached critical mass, surely a sign of a city on
the make.
And a city with buzz means the return of
those who left. Many of them, in addition to the local young bucks making
their millions in high tech, are settling in Neve Tzedek, which, just 20
years ago, was a slum. Rents have exploded, and today this is a popular
place to eat and drink, shop and spa.
As I sit on the sunny terrace at Café Mia
amid the Beautiful People with their lap dogs and young couples with $1,000
orange Bugaboo strollers, I can see that this is a young city (the average
age here is 36) and that it has money.
Israel’s metropolis is one of the world’s
great beach cities. And party towns. And design centres. Really.
With youth and shekels comes a vibrant
cosmopolitan energy that has transformed the place. And the best of the best
is homegrown. From the pomegranates (juiced at stands dotting the city) to
the cucumbers and tomatoes (found in my daily breakfast of chopped Israeli
salad), the fresh fruits and vegetables are the culinary envy of chefs the
world over. Israelis typically eat organically, locally and seasonally and,
due to the prohibitive cost of imports, always have. Starbucks came and went
within two years because you can get better coffee on any corner for
cheaper. (I defy you to find a bad espresso in Tel Aviv.) The beautiful
chocolate truffles I’m eyeing in the window at Café Mia aren’t from France;
they’re from a cool new chocolatier in the nearby Galilee. The fashions,
too, are delicious and appealing. I did very well at Fashion Fridays at the
Dizengoff Center, where young designers from local boutiques roll their
racks into a temporary semi-enclosed area in the lower level of the mall,
the place becoming a riot of mauve jersey wrap dresses and golden-laced
tops.
As I finish lapping up my latte in Neve
Tzedek, I think were it not for the swirls of cigarette smoke and the Hebrew
being shouted into cellphones, I could be in any chic city anywhere. And
then the token “security surcharge” on my restaurant bill reminds me exactly
where I am.
Just beyond the renovated warehouses and
velvet ropes lies the wooden boardwalk and then the rocks and sand and spray
from the sea, not five metres from the patio of Comme Il Faut Café, where
I’m eating fresh seafood tossed with roasted cauliflower, green beans and a
Peruvian chili and za’atar sherry vinaigrette. It’s a flat-out delicious
salad that whispers restrained elegance. Around us, the women are
sun-kissed, their eyes heavily lined in kohl. The naval promenade becomes
like a seaside catwalk for them as they languidly stroll in heels. Admiring
their confidence, I later invest in an eyeliner to call my own, and for the
remainder of the trip people address me only in Hebrew. (I’m secretly
thrilled.) The men are dark and manly with wandering eyes and chestnut hair
that stops just short of being full-on curls. I want to touch them all.
The port of Tel Aviv fell into disarray in
the 1960s, when the nearby deepwater port of Ashdod emerged as a better
shipping alternative. This area, just north of the seemingly endless stretch
of beaches that end at the ancient port of Old Jaffa, was basically
abandoned until the late 1990s, when a multimillion-dollar rejuvenation
project was launched. By 2005, it had emerged as the most popular quarter in
the city. Rundown hangars that once housed oranges are now blocks of shops,
galleries, publishing and graphic art workspaces and dozens of restaurants,
bars and clubs, all linked by buildings and a promenade patio system that
stretches end to end.
One of the bars is named after a local
mental institution; it’s got a South Beach vibe, all open air with palm
trees and sand floor. Next is Whisky à Go-Go, this one with steely good
looks. Others have situation-appropriate names, like Speedo and Sea Breeze
Spa & Bar, and boast low-slung chaises with overstuffed pillows and stubby
tables overloaded with icy drinks and condensation rings. What’s especially
striking is that on a Wednesday night, every last one of them is packed.
I think, This is the Israel you don’t
see on the six o’clock news.
Earlier in the evening, with my yellow cab
inching through the sticky October air toward the port area, the Namal,
Reuven, my amicable taxi driver, had been filling me in on what’s been going
on in his city since I’ve been gone. “I take people to the airport at 5 a.m.
and all the clubs, steak houses – all full,” he enthuses. “Nobody is
thinking to go home before morning. See that place?” He points to a modern
pizza parlour to our left. “See that place?” He points to the Parisian-chic
café to our right. “That one is open 24 hours.” Reuven says the restaurants
with their “gourmet foods” are so good “but not cheap anymore. Many young
ones make a lot of money in high tech, and they’re spending it.”
Toward the end of my trip, I’m already
reminiscing about its beginnings. Out on the terrace of Hotel Mizpe Hayamim,
a Relais & Châteaux wellness spa in the Upper Galilee, I was polishing off a
bottle of Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon with Niso, the driver for my first two
days in the country. As we sat under starry skies amid floral Galilee
breezes, Niso, a bear of a man, was giving me the lowdown on how to make the
most of my time in Tel Aviv before we headed there in the morning: “The
Namal, I take the British tourists there and they can’t believe it. London,
Amsterdam – it beats them all. People come to Israel and at first they’re
afraid. They think it’s like another world.”
It is, and it isn’t.
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