My Sarona

Being the name of a district in the centre of Tel Aviv where a small cluster of Bavarian style pre WW2 houses were built for a colony of German Jews who had resettled from Europe. The two story timber buildings and the spaces between them have been kept intact and are now surrounded by skyscrapers; it’s as if an alpine village had been dropped into the middle of Manhattan. Repurposed as shops, restaurants and a visitor centre, with small plazas and green areas for rest and play, the result is as incongruous as it is charming.

So of course we had to stop for a beer. Or two. And ended up doing shots with the bar staff. And talking to the big stein drinking guys next to us. To be fair it was quite late in the day, must have been half past four when we had our first. Slightly less abstemiously it was pushing midnight when we had our last, but there were mitigating circumstances in that we had come home with takeaway hummus and falafel when TSM found that an old Uni friend from thirty years back and his wife were eating Mexican food in the restaurant about three hundred metres from our Airbnb. So we went out to join them and I have to say it was lovely; nothing like making connections and listening to tales of TSM’s youth in the Sheffield of the 1980s.

The big news of the day was that we got more tattoos (before consuming any alcohol I hasten to add), in TSM’s case a beautiful symbol formed from Hebrew script and in my case the V for vegan icon. Call it a bit of proud self branding, a declaration that I stand proudly with my animal friends. The parlour staff were very sweet particularly when TSM emerged with a big grin declaring it was her first time.

Working backwards, we went to the strangest little museum that told the not uncontroversial story of the founding of modern Israel, which mainly consisted of watching three multimedia presentations and sitting at one point in a mock up of the deck of a refugee ship. The old newsreel footage was fascinating and the narrative quite blunt about the bitterness of the period. They say there are two sides to every story but there are a lot more than that to this one. A bit sobering. I will be doing some reading when I get the chance.

Found a lovely little vegan cafe where I had the most amazing cake around the middle of the day. Heart shaped, crunchy on the outside and soft and creamy on the inside, with gold leaf and crunchy salted caramel and nuts. I asked the owner what it was called and he said it was a heart shaped pudding. My fault for asking.

Did some shopping, got a lovely pair of trousers reduced from eighty to twenty five pounds and a beautiful ring for TSM. Before all this we went to Anastasia for breakfast that turned into lazy brunch. This was unbelievable. Vegan shakshouka with “eggs” made from polenta and tofu and breads and dips that tasted out of this world. And the staff there are gorgeous, I mean lovely to the last. In fact everywhere we’ve been the people have been amazing - friendly, interested, funny. Right down to the car hire place this morning where the woman sorting out our paperwork was really sweet. That was slightly traumatic by the way; miss a satnav turn in Tel Aviv and their one way traffic system will take fifteen minutes off your life as you have to go around the block big time; we literally ended up doing over two kilometres to get to our destination three hundred metres away. But you learn, you learn.

Fantastic day. Really. Quite amazing.