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Tel Aviv – last stop in Israel

Wow this has been a long series!  I hope everyone has enjoyed this trip to Israel, which wound up taking a lot more posts than I had initially intended.  The end of our trip was saved for Tel Aviv, which compared to the rest of Israel isn’t the most interesting of cities.  However, it is the place where most Israelis live and that was also the case with Nelya’s relatives.  As we were visiting from far away, we were shown hospitality that I had never seen before in all of our travels.  It is true that Israelis are not known for their hospitality to strangers, but if they know you they are the nicest people you will ever meet.

The cat above is sure pushing its luck a bit, but supposedly good things will happen to you if you touch this stone, so perhaps it knew what it was doing.  The above cat was taken at Jaffa, which used to be primarily an Arab city but now if full of boutique shops – most of them owned by Israelis.  The entire area of Jaffa is very pretty and full of cats.

However by far the highlight of our stay in Tel Aviv was being guests of honor at a hip Tel Aviv nightclub.  One of Nelya’s cousins owns several night clubs in Tel Aviv and invited us one night to check it out.  Of course, we obliged, and Nelya’s Aunt was nice enough to watch the kids for the evening.

Let me say one thing about the place first.  I haven’t been out partying for several years, but this place was light years ahead of the sorry hangouts I used to attend.  Here is a web site (in Russian) for all of his clubs – http://profiru.com/.  Running night clubs is an incredibly exhausting job – as he is constantly redoing clubs to make sure people don’t lose interest.  Here is a new one called Mandys that he just opened – http://profiru.com/mandys/

We were led by another cousin of Nelya’s – the brother of the one who owns the clubs, and I must admit that I felt not a little out of place.  This club looked straight out of a Hollywood movie.  In front of the doors to the club stood a woman cooly holding a cigarette.  We watched as a number of people approached her.  Each would hand her his/her Id and with a whisk of her hand she would either let them in or crush them.  Two large guards behind her made sure no one questioned her decisions.  This wasn’t a club for everyone – only the best looking people were allowed in.  To be honest, I was a bit worried they wouldn’t let me in.  However one look at Grisha (Nelya’s cousin) and she turned to a smile and let us through, where a caviar bar awaited the special guests let in early.

We were allowed whatever we wanted from the bar but to be honest the environment is what intoxicated us – this place was moving!  Ruben (the owner) took it to heart to make sure everyone was entertained and constantly mixed up the music and the performers.  He often travels to Moscow and elsewhere looking for performers for his club and almost never did we become bored – as each would spend some time playing before another would take his/her place.  Behind the performers were what looked like alien space ships – but were really special effects lights.  In some sense they were transformers as they seemed to have an endless array of lights they could use for different occasions.  Again, you could film a part of any gangster/mob Hollywood movie here and the place would have fit it perfectly.

Later in the evening the announcer screamed out to welcome Joe and Nelya from the US.  The crowd screamed (as they did with almost anything the announcer said), though none of them had any idea who we were.  Sitting next to us at the beginning of our stay was one of the top radio personnel in Tel Aviv.  Other individuals there were obviously big players with money to spend.  Still, it was nice being someone for once.

Alas, after spending our last day relaxing on the Mediterranean Sea with Nelya’s family, it was time to head back to the US.  Israel was a nice place to visit, and we do plan to visit again to see our family.  We are still planning where we will visit next, but in the meantime I think we need to see some more bugs.

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Tags: israel, jaffa, photography, tel aviv, Travel