Tel Aviv, Israel—

Tel Aviv was pretty cool and my hotel was pretty close to the beach. It was a little chilly (still early spring) and it was a little too cold to swim so I just had to admire it from a distance. The water was very blue and it was pretty awesome to see an endless Medditerranean sea.

The food here was very good, a lot of different foods from Italy, Mexico, Asia etc

Work partners took me to the Meat Bar. It was fantastic, they kept their steaks aged and well. It was probably one of the better steaks I've had.

After work, visited Jaffa. A work partner was kind enough to show me around here

At 3am went to an awesome bakery on Jaffa

Another day went to Miznon. Amazing falafels. The beer of Israel is a lager called Goldstar. Pretty good, lighter than Yuengling, kind of tastes like Leffe.

This was the 2nd time the guy asked if I wanted to take a shot of liquor with him, I presume he might've been the owner or a manager. How could I pass it up? The people here are super nice. I definitely want to do some of that Grilled Cauliflower at home (afaik its salt, grill, cauliflower, maybe add some spices)

There were some nice architecture here in Tel Aviv. I shot these as I was on m way to the bus station for Jerusalem. Sadly did not make it as I had to go in for work.

The last meal I ate at Tapachula. This place was so good that I ate here again (I ate here for the first night). Bartender was super friendly too. This place had the best fish tacos I've ever had and an amazing Chili with their own hot sauces and Tabasco Habanero.

I stayed at Ultra Boutique Hotel. This was really close to the beach, the location was great, room was clean and relatively quiet (at the time of this writing there was heavy construction near). I really liked the chic style of the room and the eco friendly flushing. The bed was comfortable and the TV was large. I specifically rememember beating Bloodborne and the DLC here.

The upstairs lobby had free snacks and offered free decent coffee from a machine. Staff was always friendly and was able to change out shekels for me and also give me some good advice for things to check out and how to get around

Primary transportation mode in Tel Aviv was through the use of an app Gett (pretty much Uber).

My only super negative experience in Tel Aviv was the airport security, it took about 3hrs to get through all of the security. I guess having been to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Indonesia put me at high security risk but it was excruciating and painful. Worst experience yet. So please make sure you get to the airport extra early for your departure. You have to go through security to get to your airline check-in, I was lucky that my flight was relatively not-full so it sped things up for that. Still took 45min or so, with heavy quizzing. But they needed to check my check in luggage of equipment and tools. It took them 1.5hrs to check it and another 1hour to go through the security carry-on bag/scanner check. I arrived at my gate a few moments before they were boarding my zone