A Palestinian port city before Tel Aviv’s founding, and the old Arab Quarter after, Jaffa—or Yafo—remains a place where Jews and Arabs live together largely in peace. To the fumbling backpacker without a care for politics, it just seems to be a more relaxed version of Tel Aviv: blasting electro has been replaced with periodic serenades from minarets, skyscrapers with clock towers, and pulsing strobe lights with streams of bulbs decking alleyways. Recent years have seen Jaffa undergo a major facelift, but this modernization is tinged with reminders of the area’s past, from the ever-wafting aroma of hookahs to the Arabic music drifting through the streets. If you came to Israel hoping for something a little more alien than the brazenly Westernized Tel Aviv, the rustic charm of Jaffa might be just what you were looking for.