We got onto the beach at Havazelet pretty quickly (and of course early!) and headed south. It's a pretty, sandy beach that resembles the beach that we'd been walking on these past 25 or so km (with a still unexplained detour via Hadera and the surrounding sandtraps.) At any rate there's something refreshing starting a walk in the cool early morning along the beach. Not long after we started we got to a low gate that delineated between the beach that belonged to the Sharon area local council and the Netanya municipality controlled beach. Or more accurately, the clean pure quiet sandy beach to the polluted noisy beach. Oh well.
We knew that today's walk was not going to be a long one and therefore we didn't have to rush. It was also pretty obvious that we would stop off in downtown Netanya for a double macchiato that we love so much but don't always find the time for in our desire to get going before the sun gets too high in the sky. With these two facts in our minds and in the knowledge that we had to lighten our load we stopped for Garry's herbal tea and chocolate croissants. Some things are sacred. We found a nice smooth rock under the shade of the cliff on the beach, sat down and had our tea and croissant. We hadn't been walking very long, perhaps 40 minutes, but we knew that a coffee break was not too far ahead. Not long after resuming from our first break the shvil sign pointed us up some stairs, taking us away from the beach and up to the well kept Netanya promenade.
We don't know Netanya very well and are fed everything we do know about it from the media. The media portrays this city, known as the diamond of the Sharon for all the diamond merchants that supposedly inhabit the place, as the mafia capital of Israel. There always seems to be a stabbing, shooting or bomb blast reported here, but what we found was a palm tree lined, neatly scrubbed, well planned and looked after promenade above a picturesque beach. I'm sure if we were to veer a kilometre off course we may have found a more sordid underbelly but I'm calling it as I see it. Miami perhaps?
After a kilometre or so we arrived to Netanya's downtown. A large town square bordered by all the things that make the Israeli economy tick: restaurants, banks and real estate agencies. Netanya's French influence was plain to see, with restaurants or cafes named Chez Beatrice or La Fromage, that looked like they hadn't changed since the original immigrants came to live here from Morocco, whoops, France, sometime back in the 50's. These same old-timers, speaking French, of course, were sitting in the same seats at the same cafes since 1952. It goes without saying that they daren't face each other, rather all facing outwards in the direction of the town square. All the better to see and be seen. It was a mixture of the anachronistic and the quaint. Miami had turned into Marseilles.
We decided that since we weren't locals and didn't speak French we wouldn't sit at Chez Simon or La Poisson et La Lait and opted for the Israeli sounding Kaffe Elad. The name was deceptive. We ordered our double macchiatos which were Frenchly delicious and they came with 3 home made butter croissants. Not the mass made pseudo cakes common in the bakery section of the local supermarkets or baked-from-the-freezer croissants that most café bars serve in Israel. You could taste the butter in these authentic French pastries. We didn't order these croissants, they came with the coffee. But if they're there already we didn't want to insult the maitre'd. We were wary that they might tack on the price of the croissants to the coffee but no, the grand total for 3 double macchiatos and 3 croissants was 30 sheqels. A bargain. How can they afford these prices and pay protection money as well?
Begrudgingly we reminded ourselves that we were doing a leg of the shvil, which is meant to include (usually) walking, so we set off down the promenade, on a cliff top overlooking the beach and sparkling Mediterranean sea below. If the area that we'd walked past in North Netanya was pleasant then the south was quite opulent. High-rise apartment blocks were sprouting up everywhere, each trying to be showier than its neighbour. Netanya must have lots of mafia barons to fill all these apartments.
After an hour or so's stroll, which included a couple of water breaks, we got to the point where we'd parked our car. The sandwiches and fruit that we'd packed in the morning were still sitting in our daypacks and there was no point in taking them home. We found an empty restaurant patio, on top of the cliff that overlooks the Poleg beach, took out our baguettes and melon and ensured there was nothing left in our bags to take home.
After two rounds of croissants, herbal tea, macchiatos, baguettes and fruit in seven kilometres of walking that we somehow stretched out to 3 hours, you'd think that we'd added enough calories for the day. Well at the mall at Havazellet HaSharon there's an excellent ice cream stand that irresistibly beckoned. The mango sorbet and Mars bar ice cream was worth those extra calories.
A final semi serious word here. We always enjoy our shvil walks; Long or short, easy or hard. The previous week we'd done a long hard walk and this short walk through Netanya was no less a shvil experience than last week's. Sometimes it's good that the principal challenge is to see how many calories we can put away rather than how many kilometres we can put away.
