Wednesday 11/6 Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and going out

We woke up, got washed up and packed, and then checked out. It was a good few nights at that hostel. The rooms (private) were really nice, and the hostel itself had nice courtyards upstairs and the such. Would definitely recommend it to people.

We went down to the Jaffa Gate bus stop, waiting for the no. 20 bus. The driver of a 60 leaving there must have seen our backpacks and known we needed the central bus terminal, because he pulled over and asked us. Turns out he was going that way too. Very helpful chap =)

Was a decently long bus ride to the bus station where we got off, through the major security checks and into the terminal to get our tickets and some food. We bought some breakfast pastry! A cinnamon scroll and a caramel-filled pastry. Very good. The bus ride was only an hour or so, heading west across the country, towards the sea (well, another sea anyway).

Again, we had to go through security to get into the bus terminal at Tel Aviv in order to go down stairs and outside to the street. Very silly. We caught a service taxi back to Momos Hostel where we had previously stayed. We happened to get the same room as before too. Pretty nifty.

We put our stuff down and headed out, determined not to waste any of our day. Being a bit tired of museums, our first target was Sheinken Street. It turned out to be a bit chilled but moreso a place for some high-end boutique shopping. We eventually turned off the street in search of a supposedly cool café with wifi. Alas, we didn't have Ozy with us but we decided to check it out anyway and get a coffee or tea.

The place, Noah café, turned out to be a really cool, chilled café in the middle of a bunch of apartment buildings. We got some seats inside and ordered some iced frappe type drinks. We drank and chilled for a long while, discussing travel plans and random things like languages. We made a decision to return the next day armed with Ozy, to make good and full use of the internet there and get our blogs for Israel uploaded.

We set off from there and walked in the general direction of our hostel. We got to Kikar Magen David and walked down the Carmel Street markets. Em bought a new folding brush and we bought a pack of cards, but otherwise we were just browsing through the many colourful stores. On our way back we bought some postcards.

Then, having not been down that way before, we headed in the direction of the beach. We walked up north along the coast for a while and then back down, just to take a stroll and to see what the Tel Aviv coastline was like. It was quite hot but the clouds were periodically covering the sun, which was nice. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit.

That evening we saw a guy sitting in the Momos lobby using an Eee-PC. Our natural reaction was to joyously inform them that we had one too and that we loved it. The guy, David, was Columbian, and spoke mostly Spanish, not much English. He needed some help uploading photos to facebook, so him using his limited Engish, and Emma using her limited Spanish, worked on getting instructions across to him.

This is how we found out we could get Momosnet wireless in the lobby. Yay. We spent a bit of the time then trying to find and log on to the network, and once we had it working we started to upload photos and get Israel blogs up. During this time we met a Uruguayan guy called Federico and soon after that, an American girl called Abbey. The five of us left Momos at about 12 or so and went down to Mike*s Place, a grungy bar down the road, by the beach.

We had a round of drinks, chatting and whatnot. Unfortunately for me, I think I was the only one there who didn't speak a single word of Spanish (well, I know a couple). The conversations went back and forth between the two languages though so it wasn´t too bad. David started getting tired and out of the conversations after a while and then he went back to retire for the night.

Another American Trevor staying at Momos met us at Mike*s Place. After all drinks were finished we all headed out, trying to decide if dancing or further drinks were the plans. We decided to go buy some booze from a supermarket and sit at the beach. Trevor left, and so the four of us took a bottle of red and some smirnofs to the beach.

We stayed there for a couple hours, drinking and talking about random things, religion, language and politics. The politics mostly involved criticising the US government and their population for apathy. I was slightly distracted the whole time by the jets flying over from the sea into Tel Aviv airport.

At 3am or so we thought we should call it a night, so we walked back. I was back in bed by half past 3 or so. A good night, I thought.