Petah Tiqwa Things to Do

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Looking for things to do in Petah Tikva, we discovered a zoo. The entrance is a little beyond the T-62 Syrian tank, now sitting peacefully in a grassy park, Yad Labanim, commemorating Petah Tikva’s fallen veterans. According to the plaque, the tank was captured in 1982, on the fourth day of Operation Peace for Galilee (aka the First Lebanon War).

The Petah Tikva zoo, called Gan Hai (lit. garden of the living) is quite a nice little zoo, with a lake, attractive landscaping and a variety of water birds, mammals and reptiles. As in most zoos, the monkeys put on the best show. You walk on a wooden ramp straight through the monkey cage, with loads of monkeys of all sizes and shapes putting on antics all around you, separated only by a mesh fence.

If you get tired of looking at living animals, Gan Hai also has a zoology museum with a large display of stuffed dead ones. Actually, it occurred to me it might be a good place for artists to learn the intricacies of animal anatomy. These guys stare back at you with their beady eyes and they don’t move around…

The entrance fee was 20 shekels for adults and 15 shekels for kids. Petah Tikva residents get in for free.

Opening hours: September-May: 9am-5pm; June-August: 9am-8pm; Friday & holiday eve: 9am-2pm; Saturday: 10am-3pm.

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There is a zoo in Petah Tikva , not as big as the one on Ramat Gan , but still a nice one.
The zoo is not a big one and you will see here , monkeys , birds , ducks , ibex , goats.

The entrance will cost 20 nis.
The zoo is very to close to Yad Lebanim so you can enjoy a nice picnic after that on the park.

This is a wonderful zoo. It is located near the mueseum of man--it has numerous birds, reptiles, monkeys, snakes, and "mefuchlatzim"--preserved animals behind glass. This is a great zoo because most of the animals are in the open air and you can interact with ALL the birds in the zoo. There is also a petting station to pet turtles and bunnies and goats. It is inside the Gan Yad Lebanim park, which is also a beautiful place. There is an entrance to this park from Chaim Orlozorov.

For a religious travel or an architecture trip you can see the beautiful house of the Lomza Yeshiva that was built on 1926.

I am not sure if you can enter the building but outside it is a very beautiful one.

Avraham Shapira was the gurdian of Petah Tikva , when the city was young.
Today . his house is a place for cultural events and a libraty and you will see outside the building a statue of shapira and his horse.

Avraham Shapira was born in 1870 and died in 1965 .

One if the oldest trees in Israel an das far as i know the oldest in Petah Tikva is the Eucalyptus Citriodora , a 100 year old tree that is located in Shapira street , very close to Herzl Street and the middle of town.

The height of the tree is something like 30-35 meters so you will not miss him.

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AROMA Espresso Bar

Downtown Petah Tikva on a Saturday night? Dead as a doornail. Only Jerusalemites like us would imagine that being so close to Tel Aviv, the “city that never sleeps,” something had to be open…Goes to show how little we know about our own country. We had the keys to an apartment in Em Hamoshavot, a new upscale neighborhood in Petah Tikva (alas, on land that used to be planted with orange groves). The plan was to overnight there, and do some sightseeing in the area the following morning.

The locals laughed at us when we asked where the “downtown” was. It’s right here, they said, pointing to a few shuttered shops near the Triple Arch commemorating Baron de Rothschild, the Jewish philanthropist who came to the rescue after a decade of failed farming endeavors in the 1880s. Try Em Hamoshavot, they said. Aroma is open.

Em Hamoshavot ( “Mother of the Colonies”) was where we were heading for the night anyway, so off we drove to Aroma. And yes, it was open, and even busy – although closing hour was near. Since the first Aroma was established in Jerusalem 10 years ago, branches have sprouted all over the country – and beyond. You can even find one in the SoHo district in NYC (open 24-hours a day).

Some people compare Aroma to Starbucks, but not being a big coffee drinker, I am not in a position to comment. What I can say is that the portions are huge.

The café itself was bright and cheery, with a red, white and black color scheme. You can sit inside, on upholstered swivel chairs, and enjoy the air-conditioning, or choose an outside table shaded by umbrellas. We ordered iced coffee and iced choco (NIS 16 each), a cheese bureka (NIS 13) and a tuna salad that came with a mound of fresh vegetables, two kinds of bread and two dressings (NIS 31) – definitely enough for two. Everything was reasonably tasty. The food was not what I would call exciting, but it was definitely filling.

This memorial near Petah Tikva is for the memory of the 28 soldiers from the Alexandroni brigade who died in a battle that took place in a village called Kula from 10-16 july 1948.

From Petah Tikva to Rosh Ha'ayin on road 444 and to road 465 near Nahshonim and Elad.