West Coast

We bid Kfar Giladi goodbye this morning, and headed west for our last full day in Israel. Our first stop was Akko (Acre). It's another ancient city on the coast of the Mediterranean. The parts we got to see today were mostly from the time of the Crusaders. We saw an old fortress used by the Hospitallers, 

as well as a (used to be) secret Templar tunnel. 

Since there are people living in modern day Akko, much of the excavations happened underground. The fortress was still above ground, but we had to go down to see much of it. We then had a lovely walk along the wall along the sea. The sea was quite stormy, with huge waves crashing over the railings.

Then it was back on the bus for a drive to Haifa. We drove along the bottom of the Bahai gardens/shrine. They come all the way down the side of Mt. Carmel. We tried to get pictures from the bus, but the windows were so salty from all of the sea mist that had gotten on them in Akko that I now have a lovely collection of photos of salty bus windows. I have them available for sale, if you're interested. ;) 

We drove up the hill to the garden entrance,  hoping they'd be open. The close when it rains, and it had been raining that morning. The shrine and the gardens below it were closed, but the upper gardens we open! It's OK, we wouldn't have had enough time to really go down the hill to see things anyway. I was able to get pictures of the shrine from up above.

We then drove to Caesarea, where Herod had a palace. It's ruins, as well. There was a wonderful aquaduct right on the coast. It made a lovely picture. 

We also saw Herod's palace, the Hippodrome, and the theater. Much of the palace and half of the Hippodrome have been reclaimed by the sea. 

It was difficult to look down and see waves washing over mosaics. I love mosaics. I also love the way Orna says the word. It sounds like mo-za-eek, with the emphasis on the 'eek' part. 

We were supposed to see a short film, but the lady in charge of the film said we were late, and she wouldn't let us in. We weren't late. A couple of our people had decided not to go down to the ruins and had stayed by the door the whole time, and it never opened to let anybody in. Orna had a huge argument with the theater lady. I'm kind of surprised she didn't just punch her in the nose. Afterwards, she said to us, "Wow, she was a real bitch, huh?" It was pretty funny.

Then it was time for Tel Aviv. I'm especially glad we got to see Tel Aviv and Jaffa with Tali, Einat, and Nira, because we barely saw any of it today. We didn't get out at all. But, we had to get people to their hotels, because some of them were getting right back on a bus to go to Bethlehem for the Christmas Eve service. Plus, we had a plane to catch. We took a hop from Tel Aviv to Eilat, so we can drive to Petra tomorrow. One other couple, Jeff and Shirley, are coming with us to Petra, and then the next day to St. Catherine's and Sharm El Sheik.

The local airport (not Ben Gurion, the international airport just outside Tel Aviv) was a bit of an adventure. It's very small - one room. It's right in the city. Gabi had to drop us off outside the parking lot, on the street. I'm not sure if that's for security purposes or because the parking lot was too small, but I'm guessing security. When you get inside the airport, the first thing you do is a security check. On the way through he front door, you put everything on the belt, and they check it. Then, you go to a security officer, where they ask you all sorts of questions about your trip. When you got there, if it was your first trip, where did you go, how many people were in your group, if you know anybody in Israel, did you buy anything, did anybody give you gifts... by far the most thorough security check I've ever done. Jeff and Shirley, the other couple from our tour that were going to Petra, had their bags pretty much unpacked and repacked by security officers. We didn't even have ours opened. Maybe he I'd something the didn't like, or maybe because we're US and they're South Africa? I don't know. Then, you can go check in. Well, we were quite early, so the desk wasn't open yet. So, we had some snacks and drinks and waited. There was free wifi, so the kids were happy. When we got up to the counter, the check in lady told us it was a discount airline, and we had to pay 30 shekels for each bag. What? At no time did our tour company tell us that. Luckily, we had the money, but I'm still angry about it. We didn't get our flight information for our 3 hop flights until we were already in the country, so there's not even a way that I could have checked baggage requirements before we left home. I took advantage of the free wifi to write to our tour operator. We'll see what he says. I'm now rather worried about our flights between Sharm and Luxor and between Luxor and Cairo, though. I hope we have wifi sometime before that, so I can see Yuval's response.

To get to the plane, we got on a shuttle. I'm going to have too look up the airport on Google maps, because I swear we must have driven halfway to Eilat just on the shuttle to the plane. The plane wasn't as small as I had feared, but it was a prop plane, which I don't like. It was extraordinarily loud in the beginning and end, but not too bad in the middle. We also had a fair amount of turbulence at the beginning and end, but it was again OK in the middle. It was only a 45 minute flight, so there wasn't a whole lot of middle. It was nice to fly low enough that we could see all the lights, though. Landing in Eilat was easy, as was getting our luggage. We had to take a taxi to the hotel (another expense we didn't know about before we left home). It was less than $10, but I'm still annoyed.

The hotel I pretty nice. We have to leave in the morning before breakfast, so they're making us breakfast boxes to take with us to Petra. We're right on the Red Sea, but we're too exhausted to go put our feet in right now. We'll get up a little early in the morning and do it. The lady at reception said it's only a 5 minute walk.

Jeff and Shirley went out, and they brought us back each an orange and a piece of cake. They offered to go out and get us schwarma, too. They were concerned that the kids would starve. We assured them that the kids were fine, and just needed some sleep. 6am wake up again tomorrow.

Emma says - Jeff & Shirley are the nicest people in the world. The cake they brought us was so awesome. If you ever need the best traveling friends ever, ask us for their facebook profiles. They are soooo cool.