The ever-charming Charming did all the planning for a little surprise Valentine's getaway this weekend to a cottage (sounds better than a one-room concrete slab house) just one block away from the BEACH in Tel Aviv! He sure knows how to win my heart. There are no photos to prove it, but I did a February swim. It was invigorating and refreshing and freezing cold.We've been to Tel Aviv before, but I forgot to tell you that the city's full name is Tel Aviv-Jaffa, because the old city of Jaffa was there before they built Tel Aviv. It's just south of what is Tel Aviv proper. Jaffa was and is home to many Arabs, and this means  that Tel Aviv in its entirety is fairly well integrated. Tel Aviv-Jaffa, as I've raved before, is art and fashion friendly. I suspect it's also the only place in the Middle East where an Arab boy or girl could openly choose to love whoever they want to love. All this freedom attracts people who like freedom, and from what I've seen in my travels, that often means artists. Everyone in Tel Aviv has an eye, even the graffiti artists.

We made it to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and saw some Picasso, Renoir, a Monet, and an Israeli artist whose name I've already forgotten and who I don't think will go down in history. I got inspired, as I always to in musems, to make more art.

Although the museum was modern and beautiful (and had a lightfall, whatever that is), my favorite arty experience was visiting the Jaffa Flea Market and seeing the  pop art that is the collections of flotsam,  collectibles, trinkets, and old shoes that fill the market.Here's one corner of the Jaffa market.

What's that? You want a closer look?

Oh, not the unicorn? You were perhaps more interested in seeing a monkey getting cozy with a giant banana? I'll do my best:

Inside that shop:

After the bizarre figurine store, I started noticing figurines and street art around town.

The trip was musically completed by a trip to the cinema to see Les Miserables.  It made me SO happy, despite the saddest song in the whole thing ringing through my head these past couple of days ("So different from this hell I'm living!"). Charming and I have been taking turns singing "But the tigers come at night." Sometimes I can hit that low note. Or pretend too.  Anne Hathaway worked so hard! And they gave her most of the beginning of the movie, which probably should have been edited down, but I'm so glad they didn't.Anyway, that whole Lay Miz tangent was so I could tell you about the bathroom mirrors in the mall curled around the cinema. Are they doing this in the U.S. now?

Looks like a normal mirror. But it's a surface for advertizing.Genevieve's vanity: Sponsored by oscillococcinum. (I had to wikipedia it. A homeopathic treatment for the flu derived from duck liver and heart.)

So you're supposed to look in the mirror, and be like "Dang. I look ________________. Yeah, I need some duck liver."Then the screen fills with the image, but you can still sort of see yourself through a haze of duck liver product.

Offal good fun,

Genevieve