Tel Aviv Hotel 2230

I'm in Tel Aviv at a hotel not on, but very close to, the beach. The hotel is smaller than the one in Jerusalem, but more homey. They are both boutique hotels, but Jerusalem is large enough to be a business hotel. The Tel Aviv hotel is the definition of boutique. I will probably not spend much time looking out the window, but my Tel Aviv hotel room has an amazing view of the Mediterranean Sea.

I spent the day exploring Tel Aviv, mostly on a hotel bicycle. Jerusalem has hills all over the place, and no matter which direction you go, you are always going uphill. Tel Aviv is flatter than I was in junior high.

This hotel has a variety of free extras for the guests. In addition to the bicycles, they have free drinks every evening, free snacks all day, free beach bags full of accessories you might need on the beach, free wifi and free computers. Keeping the computers or bicycles is not an option, but I think letting guests borrow a laptop is a great idea. I'm typing this on their computer right now. Lily's phone has been convenient, but I can type much faster on a real keyboard. It is also nice to have a full-size screen.

From what little I have seen, Tel Aviv is a great bicycle town. There is a promenade that stretches almost the entire length of all the beaches from the river to Jaffa. There is Jaffa, which is the oldest and most biblical part of the city. There is a huge park right around the corner from my hotel. And there are bicycles lanes all over the place. I have seen several bicycle rental stations, so one need not stay at a hotel with free bikes.

It seems strange to say, but this city reminds me of San Francisco, only with far fewer hills. Tel Aviv is a big city with world class museums and performing arts, and is a small, laid back beach town at the same time. The city is noticeably liberal in several ways. There are rainbow flags all over the place and it is supposed to be home to the largest gay pride parade in the Middle East. I don't know how impressive that is since most places in the Middle East openly kill you if you are openly gay. No one is afraid to be themselves in Tel Aviv. On the Promenade, I saw two guys in hot pants and tank tops holding hands on the same street as a Muslim couple in their traditional robes and head scarves, and a few Orthodox Jews in their black suits and felt hats. No one attacked anyone. They all seemed to accept the fact that the others exist, and they went on with their lives. As if people who are not exactly the same can live side by side in the same place. Crazy.

Tel Aviv is obviously a green city. Not only with the bicycles, but they have enormous recycle bins every few blocks. These are not simply trash cans painted a different color. They are industrial-size dumpsters exclusively for bottles and cans. It is hard enough to find a regular trash can in China, so recycle dumpsters are impressive to me. According to what I just looked up on this hotel computer, Israel recycles 59% of its plastic bottles. That does not sound high enough to me, but the United States is only at 30%.

There are solar panels everywhere. That makes perfect sense since this is a beach town on the Mediterranean, but there is ample sunlight all over this region that most people are not using. Get to a high enough floor and you can see solar panels on every single roof here, along with a lot of rooftop vegetable gardens. It is actually illegal to not use solar powered water heaters in Tel Aviv.

I have also read that Tel Aviv has the most vegan restaurants in the world per capita. I have no idea if that is true or not. I would assume it was Portland or Los Angeles, but looking around, these are some healthy people. Los Angeles has a reputation for having a population of movie stars, but the last time I was there, more people looked like Zach Galifianakis than Zac Efron.