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"200m from the beach" is the kind of thing every listing says and nobody quite believes. Here is what it actually means, along with everything else you can reach on foot before you have finished your coffee.

The short version

• The beach: 200m, about three minutes.
• Ben Yehuda Street, for everyday shops: one block.
• Dizengoff Street, for the good cafes: about ten minutes.
• You will not need public transport to live here day to day.

The beach, three minutes

Out of the building, west, and you are on the promenade. It is genuinely 200m, which is short enough to go down for an hour before dinner and be back in time to change.

Gordon Beach and Gordon Pool are a short walk north along the front. The promenade itself runs for miles in both directions, flat the whole way, and is as busy at seven in the morning with runners as it is at seven in the evening with everybody else.

The practical block

Ben Yehuda Street is the one you will use without thinking about it. Supermarket, bakery, pharmacy, cash machines, a couple of decent places for a quick lunch. It runs parallel to the sea one block back, which means you can do the shopping and be home in ten minutes.

This is the part of self-catering that decides whether a kitchen gets used. If the nearest supermarket were a bus ride away, nobody would bother.

Dizengoff, about ten minutes

Walk inland and you reach Dizengoff Street, which is where Tel Aviv keeps most of its good coffee. It is a long street and the character changes as you go: quieter and more residential at the northern end, busier as you approach Dizengoff Square and the shops.

Take the walk slowly. These are the streets where the White City architecture is thickest, and it sits above head height: bakery or launderette at street level, 1930s apartment building for the three floors above it.

Further, but still walkable

• The Tel Aviv Port at the northern end of the promenade - about half an hour along the sea, and pleasant the whole way.
• Rothschild Boulevard, the wide tree-lined one that gets photographed, is a longer walk or a very short ride.
• Carmel Market is a walk south, and worth doing in the morning when it is at its best.

What this means in practice

You can stay here for a week without working out the transport network. The trains and the light rail are for getting out of the city, and worth knowing for that. For the ordinary business of a holiday - beach, coffee, shopping - a quarter of an hour on foot covers all of it.

Yehuda will point you at the nearest of everything when he hands over the keys. It is a short briefing, because it is a short list.