Jaffa/Yafo

Okay - it's been a bit since I last posted and I don't remember now why I didn't make it to Carmel market last Friday...but something happend and I'm sure it was fun. We did go to the grocery store up in Hertzaliya to get supplies for Sundays party. We headed out for the Dead Sea on Saturday but the rent-a-car stalled twice so we decided rather than head over to the West Bank in a questionable car (where the car rental people will NOT come get you if there is a problem) we would drive around Old Jaffa for a bit til we felt confident in the car. Jaffa is the oldest part of Tel Aviv...not officially part of the city. It is primarily Arab and I had wanted to go there but hadn't made it yet. The main part of Jaffa (or Yafo...all the places here have three or four possible spellings making it somuch fun to navigate) is best seen by car. Not alot of exciting things to get out and do but different enough from Tel Aviv to make it worth seeing. But then we stumbled across the old city. We just lucked into it..Deb had been to Jaffa before and not been impressed but kept hearing that it was really cool. We thought we must have a very different idea of cool until we accidently found the old city. You pay you money and park and walk through it. They have restored the area like the old walled city was and it is filled with art galleries and resteraunts and that's where the famous flea market it is (but we were there on Shabbot so most things were closed) It was Amazing..one of my favorite places I went. Lots of twisty stone alleys and beautiful flowers and art hanging on the street walls everywhere. All kinds of art from old fashioned to modern, sculpture, paintings, everything. And almost all of the stores were artist galleries. It was just like I imagine a perfect city would be, adorable, old fashioned, with art everywhere. If there had been a soundtrack, I would have thought I was in a fantasy world. The heat also kept us firmly anchored to the real world. We could only wander for about 2 hours and then had to get back in the car. I was feeling kind of whimpy because I really liked it and wanted to spend more time there, didn't even make it to the park or resteraunts and then we found out it was over 100 degrees! I felt less guilty then! We drove more around Jaffa (in the air conditioned car) and then headed back for our afternoon rest and party prep. Sunday was mostly party prep...another grocery store run, hardware store run and preparing everything. We had a sunset party (make your own nachos as my Utah friends will be familiar with) About 15 of Debs friends and coworkers came. I really enjoyed meeting them. They are a cool crowd. And they enjoyed the nachos! So all in all a good weekend.