10-12-2022: Caesarea and Tel Aviv

We left Mishmar HaEmek mid-morning heading to Tel Aviv. Gadi and Shira have given us their apartment for a couple of days so we’ll be staying Wednesday and Thursday night. They are taking the kids somewhere for the last couple of days of the holiday. It’s so nice of them to do this as it give us a home base for a couple of days so we can see the sights in and around Tel Aviv.

Carol took us first to see Caesarea, which is a national park containing the remains of several ancient cities. It is a coastal city that once was one of the greatest seaports on the Mediterranean. There are remnants from periods occupied by Persians (Phoenicians), Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, and Ottomans. It’s pretty interesting seeing little bits of all these periods.

King Herod gave the city its name and he built the port city. It was a planned city with a network of crisscrossing roads, a temple, theater, amphitheater, markets and residential quarters. By 6 BCE, Caesarea became the headquarters of the Roman government in Palestine.

The Roman influence was evident in mosaics and some of the adornments. A part of an aqueduct was visible as well. This aqueduct carried water to the city from a spring 7 km away.

It was a hot, sunny day and we were quite sweaty walking around Caesarea. There wasn’t much shade, but we made full advantage of what there was.

I keep forgetting about the Crusades and how much damage Crusaders inflicted in this area of the world. Entrance to Caesarea is through a building built by the Crusaders which really surprised me.

After Caesarea, we headed into Tel Aviv. It is an amazing city of modern skyscrapers as well as older neighborhoods. The building going on is astonishing with giant cranes and half-built scrapers everywhere.

We parked the car near where Sivan works. As you can imagine, parking in the city is a nightmare, so Sivan arranged a parking slot for us. We then walked down famous Rothschild Boulevard for a bit. Rothschild Boulevard is a commercial center. It has major financial institutions lining the street, a cultural center, with the main theater and concert hall of Tel Aviv, a culinary center, with tons of top restaurants, and a leisure center. The walkway in the center of the boulevard is popular with dog walkers, bikers, and some of Tel Aviv’s wealthiest and most beautiful who stop off at the coffee kiosks found in the center of the street.

We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch and then strolled over to a section of the city famous for Bauhaus architecture. The Bauhaus movement started in Germany in the early 1900s and was based on the ideal of bringing all art together in one space. The Bauhaus style tends to feature simple geometric shapes like rectangles and spheres, without elaborate decorations. Buildings, furniture, and fonts often feature rounded corners and sometimes rounded walls. Other buildings are characterized by rectangular features, for example protruding balconies with flat, chunky railings facing the street, and long banks of windows. Furniture often uses chrome metal pipes that curve at corners. When the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus movement in 1933, thousands and German Jews relocated to Mandatory Palestine. With such an influx of people, housing was needed and so many bauhaus residential buildings were erected. As a result, Tel Aviv has the largest collection of bauhaus structures in the world.

There was a street market in the area of many of the bauhaus buildings and so the photos don’t do much to show the architecture, but we had fun wandering around the market.

There are many really cool buildings in all the areas we walked.

After wandering around the bauhaus area, we treated ourselves to ice cream and sat along Rothschild Blvd. people watching. Surprisingly, Sivan spotted us from down the street and came over to say hello before returning to her office. Afterwards, we decided that we had had enough tourism, so we returned to Gadi and Shira’s apartment for well-earned naps. After resting, we decided to walk to a restaurant in the neighborhood for a late dinner. It was a lovely evening for a walk and, after several attempts to find the place we wanted, and 3 queries of walkers for directions, we found NoNo Mimis. We sat outside in a courtyard underneath some very tall buildings, and had a nice pizza and salad dinner.

We walked back to Gadi and Shira’s very nice apartment and it wasn’t long before we each were in bed after a wonderful day together seeing the sights and learning a lot.