Israel & Jordan 2023: First Night in Tel Aviv

Despite the long day of traveling, I knew that the husband would not be content with resting. We have to explore somehow, somewhere nearby. Unbeknownst to me, my husband had planned a meet-up with this guy he worked with for years albeit digitally. The guy works in the company's Haifa office, while the husband works in the main office here in California. Also surprising was the fact that he was coming tonight.

Tomer, his colleague from the Haifa office, fetched us for dinner. I was in the dark about their dinner plans or the fact that the husband had requested to be taken to a local restaurant where the menu has no English translation.

The restaurant that Tomer took us to was outside of Tel Aviv and near where he lives. It is also the same restaurant that his family patronizes so he can vouch for the quality and taste of food. The photos we took tagged the location as Yehuda (Or Yehuda). The restaurant is called Abdalla an Iraqi-Israeli eatery.

Since the menu was in Hebrew, we let Tomer do the ordering. He's been eating here so he knows what to order. I was flabbergasted when the servers delivered small dishes like banchan (Korean) or side dishes. There were a lot of them and all of them were vegetables, some were pickled while others were mixed with mayo. They were so good.

The long table is almost full of dishes, they're yummy too. I was getting really full. And this table did not even contain the breaded cauliflower (like tempura) that was so meaty and yummy, very filling. It was then Tomer told us we better get the main dish (which is usually a kebab) because all these side dishes were free with a main dish purchase, otherwise you pay for all these.

So we ordered a combination kebab plate. So much food. Tomer ended up taking some boxes home.

Tomer drove us back to the hotel with the promise that he would come pick us up in the morning to take us to one of the local markets. Local markets are one of the places we always wanted to visit when in a new city.

This was the time we met the night shift door man. Isn't he a cutie pie?

We were too stuffed to sleep or rest, we wanted to walk off the food. The waterfront, 2 blocks away, was the obvious choice. The beach was still alive with young people playing volleyball. We walked the promenade and found eateries lining the beach and a sight of bakery open this late in the night piqued our curiosity, so we went in and even with full stomach decided we needed some ice cream to keep us going.

We walked on the beach side, then crossed the road to the grocery store for a little shopping for snacks when our tour officially starts the following day.

Still have the Christmas tree up in mid January.

When we finally got back to the hotel, we found the doorman asleep on the job. Humans said he's held this job for the past 6 years. Looks like he's got job security.

Hope you all keep coming back to see what other new experiences we were exposed to in this splendid trip.