Tel Aviv II - Florentine Hostel

We hopped a bus to Tel Aviv, and first on the list was finding our hostel where we’d made reservations, so we could drop off some of our load. The Florentine Hostel turned out to be a great hostel also! We loved the balcony. It was sectioned into couch areas, table and chair areas, a hammock area, and luggage storage area, making it a great environment to hang out with your own travel buddies, but also conducive to meeting others, if you so desired.

Keeping with what I’ve heard from everyone else, our hostel manager told us that regardless of what the area looked like outside the door, that it was a perfectly safe neighborhood. And indeed, as we’d been following the map to find the address the first time, we were all a bit relieved it was midday, and had wondered about the area. If I found myself in a neighborhood that looked like this one in the states, I would quickly backtrack, but the cover to this book indicates a completely different reality than the judgment it initially evokes from me. Incidentally, I learned at ke’ela today that in Hebrew they have a similar saying, but it is, “Don’t judge a jug by it’s outside. It’s the contents that matter.” or something like that.

The hostel had a nice laid-back and family feel, with notes scrawled right on the walls and appliances in black magic marker! Haha, it made me laugh, though everyone else seemed to think it totally normal. I was quite amused, and thankfully no one seemed to be bothered by my continually snapping shutter.

We dropped off my computer, I took my friends to NaLagaat, but we decided the dinner would be too expensive at this point, found another restaurant and I ended up with meat on my plate, but thankfully our friend took it for me. :-) Then it was back to the hostel for the night. I was able to do some laundry, we delighted ourselves in the hammocks, went out briefly for some dinner, and we had a good night’s sleep.

The next day my friend and I parted ways as she head back north to Haifa, and I went to join the other Fulbrighters from around Israel for our official in-country orientation. :-) It was great to see everyone again. We had met back in June at the pre-departure orientation and even though I had to basically relearn all their names and projects, there was at least a little familiarity and certainly camaraderie with them. I had told them in June that the next time they’d see me I would have short hair, but between July and October, I’d forgotten they hadn’t seen it, yet. It was great fun to “re-meet” several of them, as I look surprisingly different with long and short “dos”.