Day 3 - Saturday, March 11, 2023 - Saturday

 On Shabbat, sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, most things shut down. There is no public transportation, all museums are closed, most shops and restaurants are closed.

After breakfast, we took a short walk down towards the beach and came across a memorial to the European refugees in the 1930s and 1940s who attempted to come to Israel and were violently intercepted by the British navy and sent to camps in Cyprus and other countries. Israel (Palestine at the time) was a British mandate and the UK was trying to disrupt the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish homeland.

We didn't know what we should do but thanks to Google, I searched "what to do on Saturday in Tel Aviv" and exceptionally useful information came back. The municipality of Tel Aviv - Yafo offers free bus transportation on 6 routes during Shabbat and we discovered that there is a free tour of the White City district at 11am.

We took a taxi to 11 Rothschild Avenue where the tour was to start. The "White City" is famous for the Bauhaus architecture of the buildings that were built in the 1930s and 1940s. There were about 20 people in our group which was led by a licensed tour guide. He started with the history of Tel Aviv which began in 1909 when people from Jaffa decided to settle about a mile away from the Jaffa city walls and founded a Jewish community. Jaffa is an ancient city, dating back to pre-Roman times and was an important port. In more recent centuries it was largely an Arab city and the port fell into disuse as it was too small for the larger ships which became common.

In the 1920s, the architecture was typically to impress the viewer from the outside, often with Greek or Roman features. The Bauhaus architecture focused on the inhabitants, providing more space inside and fairly plain exterior features.

After a historic schoolhouse was torn down in the 1950s to make way for a skyscraper, for many years the tallest in the Middle East, there was a push for historic preservation and legislation was passed to protect older buildings. The way it was implemented was problematic as it did nothing to preserve the historic nature of the neighborhoods. The worst example was a tall glass and steel building that was constructed directly over and along one side of a beautiful old house - awful!

Our tour guide was an older gentleman and was not shy about expressing his views of the current state of politics in Israel. He was saying that the only way Netenyahu could avoid jail was to be elected prime minister and have a legislature that would reduce the power of their supreme court. He wanted us all to join a protest against these changes. We didn't go although I would have liked to! It sounds too similar to what is happening in the US.

After our more than two-hour tour we managed to find the free Shabbat bus and came back to the hotel for a short break. We then took another bus that runs along the seashore to Old Jaffa where we enjoyed a beer on the waterfront and people-watching. We then meandered up the steep interior stairways to the top of the city and walked back though a beautiful park to catch the bus back to the hotel.

We had a delicious seafood dinner at a restaurant along the boardwalk just a few blocks from our hotel. I had seafood risotto and Carmen had shrimp with blue cheese. I think this was the same restaurant where my mother and I had dinner 5 years ago but the cuisine had changed.

It was a perfect day with clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-70s.

Tel Aviv skyline from Old Jaffa

Ulster Habitat in Old Jaffa

Gordon Beach - two blocks from our hotel