Jerusalem v. Tel Aviv: Torn Between Two Loves
A tale of competing Israeli cities.
The best things in life aren’t free. Trust me. You get what you pay for, and in Israel, one of the most expensive countries I’ve ever visited, I paid a lot and got a lot when I went in 2013.
The best things in life are something else — totally unexpected.
Which brings me inland to Jerusalem. I’m so glad I took the bus there after 28 days in Tel Aviv, a coastal city that had hovered near the top of my travel bucket list for years. Ever since I dated Amir, a Tel Aviv-born-and-bred guy in whose Brooklyn apartment I spent the Y2K New Year’s Eve, I’d been dying to check out his hometown.
I never really wanted — or expected — to go to Jerusalem. It had never made any of my mental bucket lists. So imagine my surprise when a mere four days there became the defining part of my five weeks in Israel, a quartet of 24-hour periods that made as great an impression on me as the quartet of weeks that preceded it.
Before I visited the Holy Land, I’d always made the same mistake that I suspect many others do, thinking of Tel Aviv…
