When you think of Tel Aviv – be honest – you think of bombs and tanks and green fatigues. During the time I spent at college in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv meant something quite different. Tel Aviv is the Large Night Out, the place to go club-crawling, the coolest beach to be seen on and the home of some of the hippest music clubs in Europe or the Middle East.

Saturday! The sabbath draws to a close, and the city comes slowly back to life. I will have spent my day browsing through the art galleries in old Yafo (Jaffa); the beautiful cliff-top ‘old city’ of Tel Aviv, which doesn’t care for religious convention.

The walk down the hill to the beach yields an ever-increasing volume of drum rhythms, as the city’s organic-coffee-drinking, cannabis-smoking, peacenik student scene does its weekend, jamming on the rocks by the Mediterranean surf.

When the sun goes down there’s an exodus along HaYarkon street and towards Dizengoff Square (Kikar Dizengoff) to stroll among the designer stores and be seen. Sabras (native-born Israelis) are dressed like North Americans in jeans and trendy T-shirts. Russian immigrant girls – Tel Aviv’s Russian population is 1 million strong – are decked out in lycra, knee-high boots and a drugstore full of peroxide and mascara.

‘Mash’ is a great, laid-back pub for out-of-towners, as English is the lingua franca here. ‘Maxim’ on King George (HaMelekh George) is a long-established favourite for live music, as is ‘Lolu’ on Allenby. Though Hebrew, Arabic and Russian are the main languages of Tel Aviv, you will have little trouble if English is your only currency. The city has a very European, very cosmopolitan way of doing business.

If you’re moving on to a club, Jerusalem’s mega-club, Haoman 17, recently branched out to Tel Aviv, which is great news for an already amazing club scene. Haoman has always attracted DJs like Paul van Dyk and Paul Oakenfold, and if that’s your thing (or even if it isn’t) you’ll be blown away by the scale and the standard of production at Haoman. You might be surprised when you walk out to find the sun is rising. And that Sunday is a work day.

Only six days and you can do it all over again!