After a long time, my best friend and I finally decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian territory together, for an hell of a trip. I was traveling from Italy and she was traveling from Spain so we agreed to meet together at the airport of Tel Aviv.
Day 1
After two planes, and not too fun layover in Instanbul of six hours I finally landed in Tel Aviv. After going through the grueling experience of Israel security, I finally made it to Tel Aviv. We got a private car to get to our Airbnb, as we landed during shabat and the shuttle service and all kind of transport services were suspended.
Day 2
Saturday? Do you know what that means in Isreal?
It means only one thing Shabbat! During Shabbat in most cities in Isreal all kind of transportation is shut down and the same can be said for most shops and stores. According to the Jewish tradition, during Shabbat Jews do not have to neither work, nor interact with anykind of technology and neither drive.
We woke up from our airbnb at the north of Tel Aviv and we decided to go for brunch at a really cute place next to our Airbnb. We get aubergines, hummus and pita and typical turkish coffee, a local delight that is basically non filtered coffee. If you are a coffee enthusiastic you should give it a try.
As everything was shut down we decided to take a walk around's the city and the local sea promenade. In spite of being the middle of wintern in the northern emisphere, there were 25 degree so we decided to stay on the beach for a while.
If you are an architecture nerd, the center of Tel Aviv has some Bahaus architecture that you definitely shouldn't miss. Another cool spot is the southern part of the city which is called Yafo, it is the oldest part of Tel Aviv as it dates back to the 1800 BCE. You can easily get lost within its narrow streets and markets. In addition, as Yafo is mostly populated by Arabs (both Christian and Muslims) it's one of the few places in Tel Aviv where you have a shot of finding something open during Shabbat.
After walking around town for the whole day as public transporation was completely halted, we decide to go back to our Airbnb. For dinner we again went for some pitas filled in with some freeshly fried falafel and sabich, an Iraqi vegetarian sandwich, that is widely available around Tel Aviv.
Day 3
#deadsea #masada
We are finally ready for our long awaited trip to the deadsea!
On a tripadvisor, we book a trip that went through Masada and the Dead sea.
Masada was a former jewish village, eventually conquered and destroyed by the Romans that is located on top of a mountain, in the middle of the desert.
We depart at 3 am, and we get to our destination at 5 am. We are in the middle of the desert so it's quite cold (def bring a jumper) and we have all the mountain to climb in front us. After an hour of walking, we finally make it to the top just in time for the dawn. The view is simply breathtaking.
After an half an hour descense, we go back to our bus and we are on our way to the dead sea. The dead sea is mostly famous for being the lowest point on the planet, and for the water that is so dense that you float without making an effort. There we spent half a day chilling and taking mud baths.
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