Haifa and Akko, Israel

Days 83-84, October 7-8, 2008

Shalom!

This will be a short entry. The last two days we’ve had a lot of rushing and a little doing so there isn’t too much to report on.

Our last morning in Jerusalem, we got a little later start than we had planned. I think that everyone was moving slower than they would have liked due to the spirits we had imbibed the night before in honor of our departure.

Our destination for the day was the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Haifa is a major Israeli port and the worldwide home of the Bahai religion. Haifa is a city of over a quarter million and has a history going back over 3500 years. Most recently, it has gained some notoriety for being attacked by rockets by Hezbollah during the Israeli war with Lebanon in 2006 .

We took the 2 hour bus ride there which is a fine way to travel around Israel if you can read a bus schedule. By the time that we got to Haifa, we were almost too late to do anything so we just walked around the city for a few hours. Haifa is built onto the side of Mt. Carmel and has the most unique subway I have seen. It is slanted to account for the slope of the mountain. When you are going up, it feels like you should be in a cable car above ground and not a subway below it.

The highlights of Haifa, on the quick, are the Bahai Gardens and the views of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Bahai Gardens and Temple dominate the topography of Haifa. The Temple is the most distinct feature of the city and, though we were too late to tour them, the gardens were impressive to view from outside.

The Bahai faith was founded in the 19th century and is a fast growing world religion. The Bahai believe that their prophet, Bahaullah, is the most recent in the line of Abraham, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad. They try to point out the historical and spiritual unity of the major world religions and try to work towards peace and tolerance on a global scale. It is an interesting modern religion and I suggest taking a few minutes to look it up on Wikipedia. One thing is for sure, they can garden.

We ate in the German colony below the Bahai Gardens and had an early evening to contrast the one from the night before.

In morning, we woke up and hopped on the train to go a few kilometers north to the modern town of Akko, Israel. Modern Akko is a sleepy fishing town but was home to the medieval town of Acre which was a crusader stronghold. It passed between Muslim and Crusader hands several times and was captured by the Muslim Army for the last time in 1291 AD. We were in a rush because we had to get to Tel Aviv so we ran through the sights quickly. The highlights were the city walls on the Mediterranean and the Templar Tunnels dug below the city to connect the crusader buildings. We also visited the old Turkish Bathhouse that is now a museum.

Yom Kippur was starting at sundown this day. It is the most Holy Jewish Holiday and the entire country literally shuts down so we had to be in Tel Aviv, settled, and stocked up on food before all of the stores closed. We took a taxi from Haifa to Tel Aviv and it was a good thing, too, because by the time we checked in and got to the supermarket, things were already starting to close. They actually closed the supermarket a few minutes after we entered. After we bought some food, there were some very concerned tourists waiting outside wondering not happy that they just involuntarily joined into the 24-hour Yom Kippur fast.

I’ll write about Yom Kippur and Tel Aviv in my next entry.