Janna's Jerusalem Journies: Haifa and Akko (May 26th and 27th, 2013)

These last few months have been a bit crazy for us. A couple months ago we suddenly realized our time was almost up in Jerusalem and there were still so many places in Israel that we wanted to see. Luckily Holly came to visit for ten days so we had an excuse to travel with her. She had been here before and seen all the major tourist sites so we wanted to find somewhere neither of us had been before. Haifa!

As a bonus, our friend from Madison, Charlie, was also visiting and staying with Katherine. Over the last few years in Madison, he learned to sail and even began teaching sailing. It just so happened that he turned 30 while he was here, and he wanted to sail on the Mediterranean in Akko for his 30th birthday. A pretty brilliant idea!

This worked out fantastically for Holly, Skye and me because Akko is only a 15 to 20 minute train ride from Haifa. Lucky for us, Charlie also wanted to see Haifa (Katherine had already been) which meant that my personal travel agent, Katherine, planned our whole trip for us. She's the best at planning and quickly getting a good feel for cities! It didn't hurt for her to have already been there, but still...Katherine's an awesome vacay planner!

We left on a Sunday morning by bus, about 2 to 2.5 hours to Haifa. Once we got to Haifa we caught another train to the top of Mount Caramel to catch the tour of the Bahai Gardens. The gardens have 19 terraces going down the mountain facing the sea with Akko on the other side. There is also a shrine with a golden dome in the central area of the gardens.

Bahai is a religion that began in the 19th century in Persia and they basically believe in figures from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They believe in one God and the unity of humankind. The founder of the religion, called the Bab (meaning gate) was imprisoned and executed. His followers were able to keep his body hidden until it eventually made it to Haifa where they built a shrine for it. The next Bab was kicked out of Persia because of his beliefs and was sent to prison in Akko. Once out of prison he stayed in Haifa where as I already mentioned, they built the shrine for the first Bab and then they built the enormous beautiful gardens around it.

We were first in line for the tour at noon. It was a huge group, so they split us into two smaller groups. Holly and I almost got separated from Skye, Katherine and Charlie, but after a small argument with the tour guide, he let them stay in our group. Israelis!

We started our way down each terrace stopping in between for the tour guide to tell us things. He basically went over the history of the Bahai, the dates things were built, etc. It was pretty interesting. The tour ended in the middle of the gardens, at the Shrine, in the middle of Mount Caramel. After the tour we went to a small theater in the gardens for a short informative movie about the Bahai and the gardens.

It's sort of random, just below the shrine on the mountain, there is a busy street and then the gardens continue down the mountain. We crossed the road to check out a little more of the gardens and then walked the rest of the way down the mountain to find lunch.

Haifa is laid out very nicely. Once down the mountain, we kept going straight out from the gardens which led us to a really pretty street over looking the sea with tons of restaurants and shops. If you look forward, you see the sea and Akko in the distance, and if you look back you see the mountain covered with the Bahai Gardens. It's beautiful!

After a quick stop at the tourist office, we went from restaurant to restaurant checking the prices, which of course were all too high. But we finally stopped at one with a ton of sandwiches and burgers for a decent price (for Israel, and compared to everything else around). Most of us ordered the burger. You may remember from my past blogs, a good burger is really hard to come by outside the states. We decided to go for it, after all, it was non-kosher and I'll take ANY opportunity I can to mix meat and cheese! It was quite good! We were impressed. It even came with all these cute sauces on the side. Yum!

Now that we were full and happy we caught a bus back up the mountain to see the Monastery and Elijah's cave. This is the cave thought to be where Elijah hid when he fled from King Ahab. There is a Jewish version and a Christian version of the cave. Katherine had already seen the Jewish version and said it wasn't worth it at all, and it was a pretty intense hike down more than half of the other side of the mountain. So we were perfectly content with just seeing the Christian version. It was very simple with the monastery built around it, and candles burning inside it.

After that we took the cable car down the mountain, that was fun! They were just big round balls that go directly down the mountain, it took about 3 minutes. Its walls were clear so we could see the mountain and the sea, it was cool. We even passed the Jewish version of Elijah's cave, and did not regret not going to it!

We got off right on the beach, goofed off a little, then continued on to catch the train to Akko. Haifa was really cool! It seemed like a really fun, unique and relaxed city.

We got on the train to Akko, a less than 20 minute ride, then walked to to our hostel which was very close to the marina in Old Akko. As we were walking toward the gate to enter the old city, we passed a sign on the beach that said, "Horse Beach", thought nothing of it and continued on. But then all of a sudden Charlie looked over and noticed there was an actual horse in the water! These three teenagers were leading it around in the water. Random! It was hilarious, we just weren't expecting it, though I suppose we should have since we passed a "horse beach" sign!

Old Akko was distinctly different from the rest of the city. It's a Unesco site because of its rich history and mixed religion. The website describes it as, "Old Acre, a historic walled port city, was continuously populated since the Phoenician period, within the domain of the Tribe of Asher. Remains from the Crusader City from 1104 to 1291, which have remained virtually intact both above and below today's street level, paint an extraordinary picture of the layout and structure of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. The present city has been defined as a fortified Ottoman city since the 18th and 19th centuries, with typical urban components such as a citadel, mosques, khans and baths."

We put our stuff down in the hostel, then headed out to explore Old Akko. There are three different market areas in the old city, one of which is a Turkish Bazaar. Unfortunately everything was shut down because Sunday is one of the Arab weekend days, and the city seemed to be mainly Arabs. We found a great place to have dinner right on the water at the Marina. We ate slowly and hung out for a long time. It was very lovely and relaxing. We weren't too impressed with our waiter, but toward the end he brought us complimentary baklava and turkish coffee. We forgave him.

After dinner we walked around a little more, exploring all the little nooks and crannies and tiny narrow streets in the old city. We nearly ended up at some sort of brothel, as some Arab guy told us only Skye and Charlie were allowed any further. Luckily they chose to stay with us ladies and we went far far away from there!

The next morning we were scheduled to start sailing at 11am and had the boat booked for three hours. We went on a hunt for breakfast with no luck at all unless we wanted felafel which apparently is popular for breakfast as well. Gross. We finally stopped at this odd place that had hookah, but we were told they had toast. Charlie and Katherine ordered some toast, and the rest of us just ordered Turkish coffee, the only coffee choice. I was expecting their toast to be a plain piece of bread. But it was actually quite fancy, it was a pita stuffed with cheese and some spices with a dipping sauce. It was pretty good but Skye, Holly and I still chose to nix it.

We only had a few minutes to buy beer and lunch for the boat, get cash and meet up with our sailing guy. We found this great store with post cards, beer and snacks and loaded up on those. Then we sent Charlie and Skye to meet the sailing guy while the Katherine, Holly and I got cash and little pizzas for lunch. Then we were finally ready to set sail!

Our sailing guy said we may not get to go the full three hours because it was really windy so the sea was extremely choppy. We got on the boat which had a very nice table, kitchen and bathroom inside. We secured the beer and got comfy while Charlie and Sailing Guy did their thing. It was so fun! We had our feet propped on the other side, and the boat was rocking so much that sometimes it was almost as if we were standing. I'm sure there are fancy sea terms for this stuff, but I have no idea what they are. It was not really the best situation for eating and drinking, so we saved all that for later. We got further out and Sailing Guy showed us Lebanon which was right in front of us. That was pretty awesome. We also had a beautiful view of Haifa, we could even see the Shrine of the gardens, and of course Old Akko was breath taking from this perspective! After a while the choppy water got to us, especially Katherine. She was so sick she had to lie down. But thankfully her toast stayed with her. We only stayed out about an hour, in fact once we docked and tied the boat up the water had gotten so choppy that Sailing Guy told us he wouldn't have taken us out at all at that point. So we were glad we got to go for a while!

But now we were stuck with all this beer and food and had no where to go! We walked back to Horse Beach, which was horse free this time, and found these nice couches in some shade and hung out there a while. Katherine and Charlie played in the water, but the rest of us just relaxed on the couches and enjoyed the view. We were basically the only people on the tiny little beach, it was very nice.

After a while we walked back to catch the train to Tel Aviv where we would catch a bus back to Jerusalem. It was a lovely couple of days! We ended it with an informal birthday dinner for Charlie with enchiladas, halva, and fun birthday decorations and noise makers. A great end to a great trip!