Day 1 and 2 - Welcome to Tel Aviv

My flight from Mumbai left at the ungodly hour of 5AM – one of those 'tweeners' where's it's difficult to stay up all night and make the flight or try to get a decent amount of rest. And it doesn't help to come home at 11:30PM after an evening downtown with Shoaib, he seems to not need rest – ever. I passed out a few quick hours and hopped in a rickshaw (which I call "Ricky Ross") at around 2:30AM from Masi's house and headed to the international airport.

Thankfully all was on time and as soon as I settled in my turquoise blue seat on my Turkish Airlines flight I was off to meet Mr. Sandman. (Aside: do turquoise and Turkey have any connection?). Taking off and landing in Istanbul is absolutely gorgeous – tropical blue water and 2 seas surround the city. The Istanbul airport was a dizzy of duty free shopping, club thumping music, and beautiful Middle Eastern women. I was taken aback, I did not realize it was what to expect for the next week.

(Afnan is sitting here and bothering me while I'm writing. He talks so much.)

My first round of questioning came at the Istanbul airport before I was to board my flight – "Why are you going to Israel?", "Do you have any family or friends there?", "Where are you coming from?", etc. When boarding the plane, they had me step aside and wait until everyone else got on, and then approached me. He pointed to my boarding pass, and said, "Not Tel Aviv". I looked down, and realized that I had given him my stub for Mumbai to Istanbul. Duh. We laughed it off and I boarded. Round 1 goes to Raje.

As many know, Israel as a recognized homeland and country for the Jewish people does not sit well with the local Muslim world. Certain neighboring Islamic countries flat out deny entry for those who have visited Israel, including Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. There are two ways for these countries to figure out if you've visited Israel – for them to ask you, and for them to check your passport.

Israel understands this travel limitation it invariably builds into a stamped passport, and offers an option to have all of your immigration stamps to be stamped on a separate form. Working the other way around, if your passport is stamped by any of these countries, or any other large Muslim destinations, it will slow your entry into the country. (More on this later – since my passport was stamped with Morocco I was asked a few extra questions when entering back into Israel from Jordan).

I'm impressed with this practice, and not wanting to be limited in my travel, pursued this option. Before even handing my passport to the immigration officer I asked her if it would be possible to give me my stamps on a separate form. Dressed in my best American tourist clothes, and with a clean shave, I walked right into Israel with no problems. Round 2 goes to Raje.

I had a few hours to kill before Vans showed up, so I spent it people watching. It was fun trying to guess from which countries flights came in from just by looking at how tourists were dressing. It was also unbelievable how beautiful the women were! Writing this in Dubai after spending a full 2 weeks in the Middle East and greater Arabia, I will confidently put Middle Eastern women up against South American women, and it would be a battle. Obviously South America will win. Round 3 to South America, and Raje.

Vans showed up right on time and we hopped in a cab for Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion Airport is about a 40 minute drive and $40 away from Tel Aviv, very similar to JFK and NYC. After a couple of "lost in translation" exchanges we made it to our hotel, an abode close to the beach with center city prices.

Tel Aviv is nicknamed the "Big Orange" in its quest to be the New York of the East. We spent a total of 3 days in the city during the week and found it to be rather metropolitan – full of restaurants, cafes, dog walkers, etc. The city buildings seem a bit tired, although I can only imagine the club and bar scenes which carry on until sunrise provide energy to the city. What gives Tel Aviv it's edge is the beach – miles of well maintained beach front on the Mediterranean where families, singles, teenagers, old, young, all come to spend the day under the hot sun and in the warm water during the weekends.

On Friday, after we reached the hotel, we freshened up and hit the boardwalk on the beach. We decided to walk south on the boardwalk towards Jaffa, the older part of Tel Aviv full of historic sites and 'souks' and find a place to eat there. The walk down was incredible – the air was filled with smells of families barbecuing delicious food and the sky for miles down was opaque with smoke. We saw mostly Muslim families, women dressed in the traditional, long, flowing outfit with headscarf, and men dressed in really whatever they feel like (shorts, flip flops, tank top, and a cowboy hat), grilling meats and vegetables on the beach and playing with their kids. There were teenagers and other gangs bumping the latest in Arabic techno and smoking sheesha in the parking lots. If my intuition is correct, it seems that most Jewish families head home in the evenings for their Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner and Muslim families dominate the beach area with their barbecues and music.

We finally found our restaurant after an hour of wandering Old Jaffa's souks and had a pleasant meal catching up. With my jet lag working in, we decided to call it a night instead of experiencing Tel Aviv's glorious nightlife (I'm going to blame it on the jet lag, but let's admit it, we're getting old). Vans was still wide awake, but was a good team player, until…

Reverse jet lag set it! Coming from the East, she had a tough time waking up the next morning, when I was ready to rock at 8AM! I ran downstairs to grab a plate of breakfast and we got ready to head for our relaxing day on the beach. We decided to find a nice beach front café to have a better breakfast, and sat down at our table overlooking the water. That alone was probably the only good thing about the restaurant. For some reason, which I want to blame on reasons other than the obvious, we weren't offered water, waited on, or even looked at by the staff for the first 15 or 20 minutes we were there. I called a waiter over and asked him if we could order, and he simply walked away ignoring us. Fed up with it and not wanting to give the restaurant our money, we got up and left.

We found several instances in Tel Aviv where we were given the cold shoulder and dozens of times we were given hard, lengthy, and uncomfortable stares. Many people gave us unwarranted attitudes when asking for directions, cab drivers the same. I've thought about this over and over and can't seem to come up with a proper reason to why, other than, "This Is Israel", and we're battling with thousands of years of history of people pitted against people. What's surprising to me is that we really only felt, I'll call it "lack of service", towards us in Tel Aviv – which is supposedly a progressive, modern, and international city. During our stay in Jerusalem at the end of the week, there was no semblance of "lack of service", probably because Jerusalem is a true "international" city where millions of travelers around the world visit. I'm ready, willing, and able to give Tel Aviv another chance although I don't believe Vans is. It has everything it needs to be an international city, the Big Orange, if it wants to be, but the biggest obstacle it needs to overcome is accepting international people. It's truly an incredible city with history, beaches, great food, and most probably an incredible nightlife (we were too "tired" (old) to witness), but we simply had an odd feeling that we were being left out for some reason – a feeling I had never had while traveling before.
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