Shopping

Shopping Streets & Malls

Allenby Street, a typical bustling Tel Avivian street, is full of furniture stores, lower-price clothing shops, bakeries, bookstores, and kiosks. The Opera Tower is an upscale mall, right where Allenby Street meets the sea and a short walk from the Ha-Yarkon Street hotel district (it takes its name from the municipal opera house that was located near here during British Mandate times). Well stocked with cafes, galleries, and shops of interest to visitors, the mall is developing into something of a center for fashionable clothing, and is the centerpiece for the revival of a neighborhood, once an architectural and social dazzle in the 1930s and 1940s. It's open standard business hours, with some cafes remaining open later in the evening.

Two blocks south of Dizengoff Square, toward King George Street, you'll find the enormous indoor Dizengoff Center Shopping Mall, located on the lower floors of a megaoffice complex. This modern, jampacked, multilevel shopping center is filled with houseware shops, a large array of clothing shops and boutiques, and specialty shops. You'll find branches of American stores popular with teenagers here. There are many fast-food counters, including a Pizza Hut. It is open Sunday to Thursday from 9:30am to 9pm and Friday from 9:30am to 2pm. You can take a pleasant dip in the Mediterranean at one of the city's best beaches when you finish making your rounds.

Shopping A to Z

Art -- Tel Aviv's Gordon Street district is the center for the sale of serious art in Israel. Gordon Street and the cross streets, from Ha-Yarkon to Dizengoff streets, are almost wall-to-wall galleries and unusual shops. The shady, once-grand Rothschild Boulevard, with its superb restaurants, is also becoming a bit of an art district. Most galleries are open Sunday to Thursday from 10am to 1pm and 5 to 8pm.

Heading the list of places to check out is the new Sotheby's Auction Gallery, 46 Rothschild Blvd. (tel. 03/560-1666; fax 03/560-8111), with exhibitions of important Israeli and international art as well as Judaica. The Stern Gallery, 30 Gordon St. (tel. 03/524-6303), specializes in Israeli and foreign Jewish artists of international renown, ranging from Kadishman, Lea Nickel, and Reuvin Rubin to works by Marc Chagall. They also have special exhibitions of younger artists and occasional blockbusters such as Four Generations of Pisarros. Other notable galleries include the Givon Gallery (contemporary works), 35 Gordon St. (tel. 03/522-5427); the Mabat Gallery, 37 Gordon St. (tel. 03/532-6863), with the newest art; Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 60 Ahad Ha'am St. (tel. 03/566-0123), contemporary, with many special exhibits; and the contemporary Julie M., 10 Bezalel Yefe St., corner of Ahad Ha'am St. (tel. 03/560-7005). In Old Jaffa, look for the Horace Richter Gallery, 24 Simhat Mazal Arie St. (tel. 03/682-5842), with beautifully mounted, carefully chosen exhibitions.

Bookstores -- There are many Steimatzky branches in Tel Aviv, including those at 107 Allenby Rd. (tel. 03/566-4973), 109 Dizengoff St. (tel. 03/523-3415), and 4 Tarsat Ave., near Ha-Bimah Theater (tel. 03/528-0806). For antiquarian, rare, and used books, try Pollack's, 36 and 42 King George St. (tel. 03/523-8613), with its sidewalk-browsing terrace and unusual selection inside; it's open Sunday to Friday from 9am to 1:30pm and Tuesday only from 4 to 7pm. If you're desperate for English reading material, especially fiction, Halper's Quality Used Books, 87 Allenby St. (tel. 03/629-9710), is the mother lode, with at least a quarter of a mile of packed bookshelves winding through its premises.

Fashion -- North Tel Aviv is the country's center for quality women's clothing and custom-designed fashion. Considering that style was almost considered sinful in the early Zionist movement, there has been a revolution in Israeli attitudes, especially in the past few years. Kikar Ha Medina in the northern part of Tel Aviv is a large, sometimes poorly kept square, but it's the heart of the city's high-rent neighborhood, and the retail shops around the square are filled with expensive international chains, but also top-of-the-line Israeli stores. The northern stretch of Dizengoff Street, starting around Gordon Street, is wall-to-wall high-style clothing shops. Among the many and varied places to explore elsewhere in the northern part of town are Gideon Oberson's stylish designer showroom at 36 Gordon St. (tel. 03/524-3822) -- Oberson has moved from bathing suits to custom fashion; Dorin Frankfurt, 40 Ben-Gurion St., near 164 Dizengoff (tel. 03/527-0379; www.dorinF.com), an acclaimed Israeli whose designs tend toward natural textiles and easy, elegant lines; and Gottex with an outlet shop at 148 Dizengoff. A stroll through the upper reaches of Dizengoff and Ben-Yehuda streets will reveal many additional shops and designer showrooms. Naama Bezalel, 212 Dizengoff St. (tel. 03/523-2964), is famous for touches of nostalgia, heavy on the 1950s and 1960s.

The Sheinkin Street area and the Neve Tzedek neighborhood are filled with little personal places and boutiques showing the lines of younger local Israeli designers -- the best in Israeli fashion is sometimes elegant, sometimes brash, often slightly insane, and made with an eye to hot, hot weather. Tip: Friday mornings there is often a young designer's bazaar on the lower level of the Dizengoff Center Shopping Mall. Check with Dizengoff Center Information (tel. 03/621-2400) to see if it's on.