THE BIG TRIP TEL AVIV.

Within a bubble of tolerance, Tel Aviv just became our favourite Pride of the season.

“Who the hell would ever want to go to Israel?” Seems a reasonable enough question when all you ever hear is about right-wing religious freakery on the news, but no one hates that sort of thing as much as the people of Tel Aviv.

“The reason you see so many rainbow flags at Pride, not only on city streets and buildings but on pretty much every business, is not just about the gay thing,” a German activist visiting for the event that sucked in 250,000 people to a city with a population of just 400,000, told us. “It’s a way of showing that they’re liberal and tolerant and don’t want anything to do with the religious extremists who try and run the country.”

And the city really is a beacon of tolerance within the Middle East, a region where kicking gay men off buildings remains a rational option for the irrational. Israel, meanwhile, was the first country in the world to allow gays in the military, and is currently wrestling with gay marriage, which is facing huge (yes, religious) opposition but will probably squeak through anyway.

Tel Aviv is, not even arguably, among the happiest, friendliest, most liberal places you could find. When you’re in the thick of this bubble of tolerance – we’re talking local Jews in all the garb not giving a rat’s back-bottom when you walk past them holding hands in itsy-bitsy fashions – it really does seem churlish to pick the nit that is the very nuanced political situation over here, even if the odd fighter jet swishing through the brochure-perfect sky is a surreal reminder.

But what’s it actually like, this Tel Aviv? Well, it’s only just over 100 years old, if you don’t count the Arab bit called Jaffa (yes, after Jaffa Cakes), which has been there for thousands of years and is still as rickety and lovely and grubby and noisy as you’d expect an ancient Arab neighbourhood to be. But at the opposite end of the scale are the huge skyscrapers – some beautiful, some thrown up – that are sprouting at the other end of the miles-long beachfront.

In between is the bit called White City, a UNESCO-protected collection of modernist buildings built by Bauhaus, the Jewish design movement whose members escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s. It’s a little dog-eared by European standards but lovely and gentle with Ramblas-like paths along the central Rothschild Boulevard.

And then there’s the gay thing. The beach down by the Hilton Hotel is designated the official gay

beach come Pride, but is pretty much that way the whole time: fine golden sand, a bulges-a-popping international bevy of slightly older men, Now That’s What I Call Gay Dance Music filling the air, a vintage caravan selling booze... It’s not a million miles away from Barcelona though not as blingy as Mykonos.

Huge gay circuit-style parties pop up on a regular basis, whether it’s the Diesel-sponsored Pride party just outside the city in a barn-cumhanger with Eurovish-winner Netta playing on one side and boys playing with each other on all the others, or regular favourite Beef, which says it all on the tin.

Then there’s the bar scene, which jumps around a bit but currently has its axis at Shpagat, a bouncy, bouncy, fun-fun-fun glass-fronted place that spills out into the street even on quiet nights, whether the traffic likes it or not. Or the weekly parties – Dreck, Werk, Arisa, ask your new chums at Shpagat for more – that will keep you occupied Monday to Sunday and back again. And remember, their Saturday is our Sunday, so the party weekend starts a day earlier over here – so book your flights accordingly.

“The gyms will be empty for six months now,” says Tel Aviv native Orr, pronounced, Awww, as we part seas post-Pride madness, us to the Dead one (eery. Haven’t been to the moon, but we imagine it’s like this), him to his day-job interviewing his nation’s movers ‘n’ shakers ‘n’ oftentimes nutjobs, Jeremy Vine-style. Then he winks. Because that stomach you can bounce penises off clearly says otherwise.