Coastal escapism.

I needed out.

Out of walls, weapons, checkpoints and people convinced of being on first-name-terms with God. I needed a place where bigots were rarer than pandas, alcohol plentiful and the attitude on weed lax.

I needed Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv is everything I like of Israel and its people. It’s a worthy capital – if not in true sense at least morally – to the culture who’s given us relativity, Google, the polio vaccine and Beastie Boys: a city of go-getters, of solution-finders, of smart people that have a hard time respecting queues and not speaking their minds. Plus, they seem to have a highly commendable inclination to driving Alfas.

From the central bus station, where the sherut drops us, to my hotel Tel Aviv flows in a grid of joyous, lively shabbiness. My hotel sits on the edge between lively-but-run-down and edgy. A building site for a mass-transit station is the promise of gentrification to come, but for now it’s mostly young lads having a drink at the bars downstairs.

Further down the road is a series of quaint villas and turn-of-the-century buildings built with flair and care, most of them adorned with the sort of boutiques that don’t ever seem to be finalising a sale. Here and there are demonstrations of the unexpected turns of history: the house of Tel Aviv’s founder is now a sushi restaurant. A bomb-making facility that would normally be raided by anti-terror police is now a stop on the city’s Independence trail. Relativity, I guess.

It’s a blustery day. The sea has mellowed the weather but wind and rain land in waves like Tom Hanks in Normandy and we can’t do anything but taking it on the chin. Red signs plaster the beach, warning against going out for a swim: in fairness, why would you. The Mediterranean has morphed into a relentless beast, lashing at the chain, foaming at the mouth in an incessant torrent of breakers. Black rags of cloud cruise in the sky trailing tentacles of rain like flying medusas. It’s great.

I take refuge back into the city. Boulevard Rothschild is a quiet, tranquil affair of families going on a post-prandial stroll and youngsters eating out. If it feels eerily familiar it’s because it is. The park behind my first home might’ve had birch trees but the buildings around are exactly the same. Same rounded balconies, same roll-up shutters, same cedar-green plaster. Who knows, perhaps there’s even a kid in a yellow beanie hat peddling up and down in his toy Testarossa.

Tel Aviv isn’t pretty and there are some serious crimes against architecture (exhibits A and B below), but it’s likeable. What’s not to like of a city where there are bars playing the Supremes as the roads echo of waves and the air is rich with the musty smell of sea? What’s not to like of a place where there’s no zealot ordering this AM-PM shut so that I can buy hummus, pita, beer and strawberries?

Back at the beach the sun is blinding Yafo whilst, further up, we sit in a twilight zone of sorts, suspended between darkness and light. Surfers bob on their boards as they wait for a decent wave whilst kite surfers, spurred by the wind, are having an absolute corker gliding up and down the coast in a carousel of hypnotic beauty.

Then, it’s all over. Another one of those flying medusas – a particularly big, gnarly one – veers over above us, unleashing a tsunami of wind. I retreat towards the hotel, listening to the rain pattering my anorak like Georgie Denbrough in the first pages of It, just without Pennywise offering a balloon from the gutters (quick glance at the nearest storm drain). Now, how about that hummus.