Jaffa

Today's city that I would like to visit, Jaffa. This one is easier to explain, I read City of Oranges, and it made the city sound amazing. Then I looked into it a little more, and a little more, and soon I really just wanted to visit this city. It definitely makes the top ten places.

One of the reasons is the history of the place. It's been around since at least 7000 B.C.E. That's just as far as we have some sort of record for. That's also about as far back as we have records for in general. So, this city has seen a lot. And history has left its mark on the city.

The city grew in such a way that would make a city-planner's head spin. It developed a street system based on its needs. The housing developed slowly over time. Unlike cities that sprang up in the last hundred or so years which have nice straight, wide boulevards. The architecture is beautiful and it all looks out on the Mediterranean. The clock tower at right was built in 1902 (extremely recent for this city) in honor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

This city used to be the site of extreme cultural diversity. It also used to be almost completely at peace with itself. This all changed with the formation of the Zionist movement. Just to cut everyone off, I am not anti-Zionist. The point is, this city lived with a diverse community and neighbors got along with one another be they Jew, Muslim, Christian, pagan or whatever. They would buy coffee and spices from one another. Politics wouldn't play into where one bought bread.

So, like Sofia, I want to get a close up of a city that lost something most struggle to find. Peace amongst its people. The diversity still exists in some of the architecture and the sea is still beautiful, and I would love to see this city the way it was seventy years ago, two hundred years ago, five thousand years ago. But I would settle for today.