Our final stop on our day tour is a locale at the very northern tip of Israel: the [w:Rosh HaNikra grottoes]. You take a small tram down the side of a cliff to get to the grottoes. The cliffs are a beautiful white chalk and the Mediterranean feeds into the grottoes, making for great tourist photos.
The main event of our tour was [w:Acre, Israel]. It's an ancient city several layers deep. Like many of the sites in Israel, it's had many different rules at different times: Greeks & Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, etc. The British used it as a prison for a while. There are several layers to the city, meaning that underneath the main city, they discovered a temple. And underneath that temple that discovered an older temple. They are still digging and finding more levels underneath what they've already found.
Our second stop on my organized tour was to the [w:Baha'i] Temple Gardens in Haifa. I thought we were going to have more time in Haifa - which is considered by many to the most beautiful city in Israel. We only had about twenty minutes, which was disappointing. They droves us to the top of the gardens, let us out to take pictures, then we drove off to the next stop. Bummer - but at least I was able to see some of the gardens.
I had the fortune of going to [w:Caesarea] two days in a row. The first visit was with David and our friend, Idit. She had decided to take us there to see some new films and exhibits that had been installed there and for lunch. She had been married at Caesarea, so it holds a special place in her heart.
After getting acclimated to Israel, we left the Ein Gedi Kibbutz and headed to Be'er Sheva. It's a major city located in the Negev Desert. David drove us up the cliffs of the Dead Sea to the desert. It was a bit of a culture shock. There were large stretches of barrenness with an occasional Bedouin village. I was not a fan of the Negev desert on our first day.
While we stayed at Ein Gedi, we took a trip to the spa. The spa had all sorts of treatments that you could get: mud treatments, ayurvedic massages, swedish massages, hot stone therapy, you name it. I got an ayurvedic massage and David got a mud massage. There were plenty of things to do if you didn't want to get a treatment. You could hang out at their big, blue pool; you could take trip down to the Dead Sea and go swimming; you could give yourself a mud treatment; or, you could stay indoors and hang out in the Dead Sea waters (they had piped up the water from the sea).
David and I stayed in Kibbutz Ein Gedi for 2 nights (or was it 3?). It's a great location for a total retreat. From there, we were able to go to Ein Gedi (the spring) and the Ein Gedi Spa (for mud baths, the Dead Sea, massages).
On our first day in Israel, we rented a car at the airport and drove to the Ein Gedi Kibbutz on the Dead Sea.
In September of 2009, David was scheduled to speak in two conferences: one in Tel Aviv and one in Berlin. He asked me if I wanted to join him and I responded with jumping up and down shouting "ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL!".
I'm writing this from Israel. Once again, Israel has totally knocked my socks off, but in an entirely different way. When I was here before I was primarily struck by all the religious sites. This time, I'm struck more with the people. Israelis generally have the reputation of being loud and pushy people. Yes, that's true.
The second half of our last full day in Israel was dedicated to the Western Wall. The Western Wall is the only remaining portion of the Temple Mount that King Herod built for the Jews. The Temple Mount was destroyed by the Romans. It is now the location of the muslim Dome of the Rock (where Muhammed left the earth to talk with God), and it is also supposedly the rock where Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac, so you get to see the problems that people have about which group has more claim to the land than someone else.
Out of everything we saw on the trip, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was by far my favorite. I went there three times: with David on our first day, with our tour guide Jaliel on the second day (and he took us some areas that we never would have found on our own), and at the end of our second day to visit the inside of Christ's Tomb. I could talk on and on about the church, but you should just go there and see it for yourself.
David and I met in Zurich and flew together to Tel Aviv. He had flown from Australia and I had flown from New York City. Needless to say, there was some jet lag - especially on David's part. The first few days, we were staying in Tel Aviv for a conference. When we got to the hotel, they didn't have a room for us, even though David was an invited guest speaker. The hotel across the street didn't have a room either. After about 2 hours of a cab ride and some mild shouting, we got a room at the Crown Plaza. It was significantly better than the hotel at the conference.
My second full day in Israel, I was on my own for the day again, so I signed up for another tour. This one was to Masada and the Dead Sea. There were seven tourists on this trip.
Our trip to Jerusalem started with a visit to the Model of the Second Temple Period. This gives one a nice perspective on what Jerusalem looked like before the destruction of the temple by the Romans. The model covered all of Jerusalem in 1:25 scale. It helps get a bearing on what one is about to see.
In September of 2005, David and I had a rendezvous in Zurich and flew to Israel for a week. This was probably David's 8th trip there, but it was my first. What was I expecting? I don't really know. Pushy people on crowded streets, perhaps; hot, arid weather; and so many armed guards as to make one constantly nervous. Boy, was I wrong.
On our first full day, I took a tour to the Sea of Galilee to see spots that are famous in the New Testament. Our tour guide was Solomon Golan and there were two other guests on the tour. Our first stop was to Nazareth, where we visited the Church of the Annunciation. This is the spot where the angel Gabriel told Mary what she was going to give birth to Jesus. Unfortunately, the original church that was built there is long gone. You learn quickly in Israel that almost everything was destroyed by either the Romans, the Syrians, the Turks, or the Crusaders.
WAAAH! I don't want to leave! Luckily, we had to get up at 2 am to catch a taxi to the airport, so I was too sleepy to get emotional about it. If you've ever thought about going to Israel, then GO! Don't put it off. These pictures are nothing compared to experiencing it firsthand. Now is a good time to go because there aren't a huge amount of tourists.
The morning of our last full day in Israel, I went to Bethlehem. This was a big deal for a few different reasons. First of all, it's the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Secondly, it was the place that I had a dream about several months prior to visitting it. And thirdly, it was in the West Bank under Palestinian control. Israeli tour guides are not allowed to go into the West Bank for security reasons, so if you want to go, you have to figure out how to get there. There are tours that go there, but I couldn't find any.
Jerusalem is more than just the land of religious epiphanies. It is also full of the most cut-throat market owners I've ever seen. The shop keepers will do anything to get you in their store. You are constantly hounded as you walk down the streets of Jerusalem. They will even stand in front of you as your walking so that you can't pass quickly. We knew enough to ignore them, but they had some sneaky tactics. Several times we would ignore them and keep walking, and they would shout "excuse me!" after us as if to say, "how could you be so rude as to ignore me!"
