The ride to Tel-Aviv only took an hour, then we took the sharut back to Momos. A sharut is half taxi and half bus. Like a bus because there are numbered routes and you have to share with other people, about a dozen. You pay 5NIS, no matter how far you ride. Like a taxi because it is actually a shared taxi and stops where you ask them to,anywhere along the route. You have to wait for the sherut to fill up before it will leave the taxi stop. Pretty good though.
Being back in TA was great.
-ATMs on every corner
-Alcohol stores
-Supermarkets
-People in skimpy clothes
-Beaches
-Cafes with wi-fi
-Street art
-Trendy shops
-Dirty streets, full of character
In Momos, we were given the same room as a week earlier. It feels like we hardly left.
We walked down Sheinken street with fashionable shops and surf stores. We stopped at a great café tucked away down a side street called café Noach. It was filled with old books and magazines, with jazz playing down the speakers. It reminded me of the cafes down Beufort street in Perth, or King street in Sydney. We sat for a while, drinking frappes and flipping through a hebrew national geographic style magazine.
I didn't understand the text, but the pictures made the topic of each article very clear. Ice hotel somewhere northern. Then articles about underage sex workers somewhere hot, maybe Hong Kong. Then foxes in the desert. We decided to bring Ozy back there tomorrow and get some photos up.
We walked around again and I noticed a book on the ground. It was a plastic kids book, a spanish picture book about farm animals. Josh said someone might come back to find it. So we put it to the side. I decided I would walk that way tomorrow and if it was still there I would keep it.
I found some tiny orange socks in a Red Dot like shop. Finally Malfi has a home. Some of his paint has been chipped off from riding in my bag the whole time. Now he has protection. We also bought some transformer stickers to decorate Ozymandias. Now he looks like this.
We found the Carmel markets and wondered through. There were clothes stalls and toys and bits and pieces. We bought some playing cards, as we hadn't brought any and I had realised that we needed them. Why? Because.
The fruit stalls had mountains of cherries and giant punnets of grapes.
Somehow we made our way from there to the beach. The Canadian I chatted to in Jerusalem said the sand in
Tel-Aviv was very soft. He was right, I think softer than the Perth sand.
We walked up and down the beach in the afternoon cloudy sun, then made our way back through the markets to Momos.
In the hostel lounge I spied a man with a white EEE Pc like Ozymandias. He was chatting on the internet. We had assumed that there was no wi-fi here. There seemed to be a spot with some chairs and a table that got the signal. We sat at his table and introduced ourselves. The guys name was David and he was from Colombia. His english was very basic and so was my spanish, but between the two he helped us get online. We swooped on Ozy like vultures to update photos and blogs. As we sat, a few more people descended on the lounge. We all got into conversation. We had a group of five or so people.
Abbey from the US. Her spanish wasn't fluent, but was leaps and bounds ahead of mine. She did some travelling in South America I think.
Trevor from the US. He told us that there was a park with his name is Perth, on hearing where we were from.
Frederico from Uruguay. He english is very very good and has been here for a few months.
I was thrilled at the idea of being able to practise my spanish with other people. At the same time I also felt shy about making mistakes. I suddenly felt like I hardly knew any at all. But they seemed nice and encouraged me, so I tried out some of my spanish on them and let them correct my pronunciation.
Frederico told me that my spanish has a very strong Australian accent. We both thought that was funny. Through the night, half of the conversations held were in spanish. It made me feel bad for Josh, who doesn't speak any. Then again, I felt bad for David when the conversations were in english.
We started at Mikes place, a beach side bar that is apparently exactly the type of bar youll find across the USA. It was loud and sort of a sports bar. But the company was good. We all hung there for a while and talked.
At about 1am we left and walked down some streets looking for the next activity. We ducked into a supermarket and grabbed some cheap wine and headed to the beach. We stayed there until 3-30am. The night air was still warm as we left the beach.
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