A walk on the Tayelet of Tel Aviv

We both slept all night last night. It must have been jetlag because the room is stifling hot, the bed is hard with a heavy duvet and no sheet and the traffic noise went on to the wee hours before things got quiet. We slept, we were jetlagged. Thank God no wild animals came through the door we kept wide open all night!

So, we wound up with at least Plan C all day today. We went back this morning to the cafe/bakery nearby that Clay had picked from the map and their website. As last night even though their website listed open hours, they were closed last night and again this morning. We can see it from the room's balcony and it looked closed but Clay assured me the website said it was open. It wasn't. I think it must not be the same place with the website. It has no name on the building and that would explain the difference between the website and the real place that sits there. Anyway. In good news, we checked with reception and we kept our room so we didn't have to pack and move. We just got new keycards. We got a letter welcoming us to the tour. We found the lobby sign board for AHI Tours suggesting we walk the opposite direction from where we'd previously walked for 15 minutes to reach the Old Tel Aviv port area with a lot of bars, cafes, restaurants and shopping. Since Clay's bakery/cafe was closed we backtracked and walked back past the Carlton in that direction. We walked 15 minutes and reached nothing but we could see that in another 15 minutes there was a restaurant. We couldn't see if it was open. I balked and we turned back again. There was another restaurant at the end of the little strip that holds the Carlton on the Beach breakfast place. Tomorrow on AHI, breakfast is included and should be there as we understand it but not today. We walked to the little place at the end and the guy working there told us he'd open at 9:30am. We came back to the room to kill time. We still didn't know the name of the place and Google Maps never showed it anytime we were out there and asked for restaurants near me. Clay found it online and the menu was the same basically as La La Lands and the bakery/cafes and Carltons. We learned it was Fortuna del Mar. We finally had breakfast. We only walked about 2 miles for it! Clay had the full breakfast which held him for 2 meals and for the same price,  I had a bowl of muesli. Go figure.

After breakfast, we went to find the Segway TLV shop.  We found guys moving Segways but still didn't see the shop. Anyway we asked them and they said no because they had a big girls' tour today, but gave us a sheet with a phone number to call. I nixed that. We filled out their website request and they never replied. I had already written them off. We walked back past the rental bike stand and decided to go into the room and  use the bathroom first before setting out. When we got back there were only 4 bikes left. As we were using the credit card kiosk to rent 2 bikes, 2 more got returned.  For whatever reason, the kiosk took our money to rent 2 bikes but would only release one. After several tries, Clay got a human on his cellphone and they told him to walk to another kiosk miles away to get the other bike and said they didn't recognize that the other 4 bikes were still parked there. They assured Clay they had no bike available to rent where we stood and he should walk a couple miles in either direction to reach the next station. He suggested we return the one bike they had released and refund him all his money. They agreed to that. So, plan C we walked. It took us over an hour to reach the big selection of eateries that our AHI sign claimed was 15 minutes down the shore. It is hot and sunny out but we're still pretty good walkers and that was too far to walk for a meal. Clay did get to buy a nice pair of mesh Merrells so he has shoes he can wear without socks now. A good thing because the forecast gets hotter everytime we check Accuweather! I still don't understand why with a 23 pound mostly empty rolling duffel he decided to leave a pair of sandals at home, but he needed a new pair anyway and hopefully these Merrells will fill that need.

So, plan C was we walked for hours. We went as far as the old Tel Aviv port lighthouse and stopped. We had picked up a pair of green apples from the Carlton lobby and we sat in the shade with them viewing the old lighthouse and watching planes land at the city airport. Clay had a gelato a little earlier. Then we walked back. When we got to the room, we found a bottle of local red wine waiting for us as a gift from our friends at Tulane Alumni Travel. Too bad it wasn't something on ice!

We have our tour meeting at 6:30pm in the hotel followed by dinner in the hotel Touring begins in earnest at 8:45am tomorrow. We're glad we came in early to get acclimated! I am going to assume there will nothing else noteworthy to report today and post this now.

Photos