We spent an extra day in Tel Aviv not only by cruising around the new town, but also analyzing the current safety situation in Israel. The news were kinda telling us to swim only in a bulletproof vest and practice taking cover. The reality was that wherever we were headed, it was safe and peaceful, and therefore we were not afraid to rent a car and explore the northern part on our own.
On Monday, we finally managed to rent a car and headed north. At first, we considered each goat’s shepherd as a sniper, but then we calmed down a bit and enjoyed those wonderful places.My mom had her itinerary as usually. She wrote down all the places we definitely needed to see (which by the way was a weekly program for normal tourists).
Our first stop was in a town called Ceasarea. There is a huge archeological park with an amazing history. We could easily spend a full day there.
We made another stop in the city of Haifa, which was super-impressive thanks to the Baháís temple and the gardens surrounding the temple. I’ve never seen anything so perfect. Anyways, this place is also a UNESCO heritage site. There are two springs flowing through the terraced gardens, I bet the trees are cut by nail scissors and pavements are made of colored little stones.
These gardens, including the beautiful temple, belong to the youngest, most peaceful, and unfortunately the most naive religion I have ever heard of. The principle is unification, peace, love and tolerance, which is practically unrealistic today. The interesting fact is that it has a branch office in the Czech Republic.
We continued on to the north and reached another destination – the town of Akko (Acre) surrounded by cool walls and other Bahai sights. The city is also listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but we thought some other cities seemed to be far nicer and more interesting.
Originally, we wanted to go further north to the Rosh Hanikra Nature Reserve, where beautiful caves can be found, but in the end, from time and security reasons (5 km from the Lebanese border) we headed east to Lake Galilei instead, which is actually quite close from the Syrian border, so it didn’t feel much safer haha:)
This place can be very nice, but by that time the heat started to be really unbearable, so I think we saw much less than we wanted.
The last stop was in Nazareth, where we arrived in the late afternoon. On the advice of local people we parked in a narrow one-way street near the Basilica of Annunciation. Since it was pretty late, it was unfortunately already closed, so we saw it only from the outside. On the way back to the car we were passing firemen and police cars and a few minutes later we found out that somebody set a tree on fire just a few meters from our car. We were blocked for at least an hour in this street. But since then we saw tons of fire in Israel, so this was just one of a hundred. Actually no one was freaking out, so I guess people are used to having things on fire.
We arrived in Jerusalem a bit after 10pm, but more about that next time. Stay tuned! <3
And what about you gyus? Have you ever had any similar experience? Have you ever been scared on your travels?
E.
