Carmel Market

One of the mornings we were in Tel Aviv, we had the opportunity to walk through the Carmel Market, also known as "Shuk Ha'Carmel." This is Tel Aviv's largest outdoor marketplace, though it pales in comparison to the bazaars and markets in Jerusalem. The Carmel Market is a long, crowded, narrow alley with stalls on both sides, and a few smaller, shorter alleyways leading off the main street. At every step, vendors will stop you with their cries of "best price in the market"--now, they cannot each actually have the best price, so the rule in a market such as this is to bargain as much as you can. Also, be sure to get exactly what you've agreed to.

Mounds of vegetables, grown locally and so quite fresh.

In the Carmel Market, you can find almost anything you might need (probably at the lowest prices in the city), from bread and pastry to olives and dried fruit to dried spices to fresh fruits and vegetables to fish and poultry to cheese to flowers! This market also has an area where vendors sell clothing such as scarves, hats, sandals, belts, and so forth.

A sample of some of the exotics we discovered here:

These eggplants were just gorgeous!

An assortment of cheeses and milk products:

A small catch-all grocery stall:

A flower stand:

It was fun to visit this particular market early during our trip to Israel, and it helped prepare us for venturing into the larger, more crowded, and certainly more intense Jerusalem bazaar.