We Find a Place to Stay in Tel Aviv

Coming to the end of our little Israel-Palestine road trip — Dead Sea, CHECK, Masada, CHECK, Ein Gedi, CHECK, Jericho, CHECK, Bethlehem, CHECK, Herodion, CHECK, Galilee, CHECK, Golan, CHECK — I rather belatedly begin to think about where we’re going to stay in Tel Aviv.

My old friend Miki – such an old friend, in fact, that when she last met Zac he couldn’t even walk yet — has kindly offered to put us up.

But… It’s her single girl apartment, her chick pad, that she bought when she was footloose and family-free, and now it has her young daughter in it too.

With the two of us, plus Miki and me doing odds and sods of work, that’s going to be, well, a bit of a squash.

So, as Roomorama has offered me some money to stay in one of their apartments and write about it, Tel Aviv, always one of my favourite cities, seems as good a place as any to do this.

For let it hereby be written: Israel is expensive. And Israel in high season is really expensive. We’re talking $90 for a room with a bathroom in a youth hostel. And not a fancy youth hostel, either.

Further, Tel Aviv in the high season is beyond expensive.

The cheapest price I can find online for a room with a private bathroom is $70, and given we’re headed into town tomorrow, the chances of one of those being available is close to zero. Most of the rest seem to hover around the $130 mark and progress rapidly upwards.

Which is, much as I love Tel Aviv, exxy. Plus, I don’t want to stay in a backpacker crashpad on Allenby. I want to stay somewhere NICE.

Though even for apartment rental, it appears I may have left things rather late…

I’ve found when renting apartments on short lets by the month from local providers (as we did in Kunming, Ubud and Dahab), you’ll typically find something with 2 or 3 bedrooms and outside space at about the same price as a guesthouse room with an en suite.

But, even on short lets, quite a few of the apartments here seem to work out cheaper than hotel rooms, too, even when you factor in the extras such as cleaning ($45), agency fee (12.5%) and electricity ($5), that don’t show up in the headline price.

Some studios are cheaper than the cheapest hotel rooms: almost all are more affordable than mid-range. Most 2-beds are cheaper than two hotel rooms.

I dispose of a few cheap “apartments” which prove on closer inspection to be spare bedrooms which the owner has unilaterally decided are large enough to count as apartments, and the super-cheap three-bedroom which proves to be only available by the month, to be priced per head, and requires a stonking $1900 cash deposit to boot.

This 2-bedroom apartment, at $82 per night, right on the beach, looks ideal. I ping in an enquiry. Nothing comes back.

I revert to studios. There’s one in Neve Tzedek, an upscale trendy area of Tel Aviv with lots of galleries, boutiques and restaurants, which reminds me a bit of how Sheinkin Street used to be back in the late 20th century, when I last visited, and is next to where Miki lives in hipster Florentine. That looks good too.

I get Zac over to look at stuff. He pronounces them good.

Soon I’m machine gunning enquiries everywhere, because, of course, it’s the high season, so everywhere is going to have gone. Plus, we need to leave Galilee at 9am and I don’t do mobile internet.

Beach would be good, I think. Actually, anything would be good at this point in time…

No response to any of my enquiries. Unsurprisingly so, since it is evening, in high season, and I want an apartment tomorrow, please, in a good, central location, ideally for no more than 2p.

Aarrggghhh…. We need somewhere to stay.

Aaarrggghhhh….

A little Google research finds me the number of the guys who operate the beach apartment.

I text them. We to and fro. Seventeen out of their eighteen properties are full, but someone’s just failed to show up for a prearranged booking at this one.

Will that do?

I take a look at it. It’s only just finished, apparently. It looks good.

Zac likes it. “It looks like the place we had in Kunming,” he says. “Stylish.” (His tastes run to IKEA minimalism meets mancave.)

Yes, it will.

He pings me over a form. I send over payment.

An email comes through with documents to digitally sign.

I grapple with the software and digitally sign them.

Then I see I’m supposed to attach a passport scan. It won’t attach.

I grapple with the software for another fifteen minutes, then click that I’ll fax it.

It refuses to send the document until I’ve faxed my passport.

Aaarrggghhhh….

F*ck it, I think. They have my money.

I cancel the rest of my enquiries and head to bed.

We poddle uneventfully back from Galilee to Jerusalem, apart from that stressful last five minutes where you have to find the car hire place while not pranging the hire car.

Y’know. “I’ve had this car for a week and not hit anything. Only five minutes to go without scraping it. Five more minutes, and don’t scrape the car. Five more minutes. What the FUCK is that guy doing? No, don’t pull out into me now. Oh Christ. I’ve overshot. I don’t want to do a turn in this traffic… Aarrggghhhh….”

And then we bus it to Jerusalem, a journey that takes noticeably less time than getting from most of North London to most of South London.

Tel Aviv traffic is in chaos because of a bomb scare, which is odd because I thought that kind of thing had stopped of late. As opposed to last time I was here, when suicide bombings, bus bombings and attempted bombings were ten a penny.

“Oh,” says the cabbie, when I ask him. “No more bombs. But still if anyone leaves a suitcase…”

And then we arrive at our surprisingly posh abode, a scrappy minute from the beach, fifteen minutes or so from Florentine, round the corner from Neve Tzedek, and right on the more authentic edges of Carmel Market, your first port of call for Medjool dates by the 5 kilo bag…

“Wow!” says Zac. “It has a bath!”

And, further, not only does it have a bath. It has a PLUG for the bath.

There are a few disadvantages to taking a brand, spanking new flat.

The A/C is brilliant, which is long overdue as Tel Aviv is currently breaking all local weather records for humidity. The wifi works like a dream. The shower has power. The TV is flatscreen and ENORMOUS.

But our landlords are, neither of them, the types of guys who, I would imagine, do much by way of home cooking, or, even, home coffee making, so have included cups and teaspoons but no kettle.

I text them. One is rapidly forthcoming.

Our brand, spanking new washing machine – and it’s a tragic commentary on the length of time that we’ve been travelling that I am proportionally MORE excited to be in temporary possession of a real, live washing machine than to be in Tel Aviv, a city that I love – needs the tap switching on, a feat I prove pathetically incapable of achieving.

Our poor landlord breaks into his Thursday to fix the bloody thing and display his Israeli muscles in the process.

And then we’re settled in. Have coffee. Have internet. Have our own little home from home.

Ready to explore Tel Aviv, or, more relevantly, make our way down the road to Neve Tzedek, where Miki has tickets for us for the last night of a dance performance.

This will, I realise, be Zac’s first encounter with modern dance.

“You WILL enjoy this,” I say, in a tone that brooks no argument. “And be sure to look at the costumes. Miki made them.”

I am wondering, as you do when you haven’t seen someone for a decade or so, whether the two of us will even recognise each other.