Netanya, Israel

Race race and race again out of the hotel, into the bus. Most ladies in our group extended their stay in Israel. Today we’re going north of Israel at literally the Lebanese border. Israel does not have a lot of alternative route so a lot of times you sit in traffic. I don’t know why there is not that many motorcycle here- it would be so much faster to drive; it could be because of the unexpected inherent violence. We finally got to Akko, we toured the old city. We saw the prison where Jews were held during the British era. Many young men in the Jewish underground perished in that prison. We then went underground to see the city of tunnels. Akko was built on top of the remains of a structure in the Hellenistic period. The crusaders used slaves to built the fort – it took 9 men to surround these columns- that’s in the refectory. The mamlooks were Egyptians crusaders who kidnapped and turned young 10 year old boys into warriors. After the fort, we walked the covered cobblestones street near the Shuk. We found ourselves at a great Mediterranean restaurant. We sat around the bar and the restaurant owner gave us a plethora of wonderful Mediterranean plates. I walked the Shuk for a bit, this Shuk was definitely for the locals; I just love to see how the locals shop and what the merchants have to offer. We continued to the Lebanese border, you could see the walled borders with security towers.you could see the base right at the border with an all male soldier base. We went to see the beautiful caves of Rosh Hanikra down the Carmel mountain. We saw a movie of what they intended to do in that era. They built train tracks and their goal was to build a track system all the way to Europe for easy goods transportation, but then we evolved to faster transport. We took the tram all the way down to the caves, and walked the tunnels to see caves with beautiful blue water. For me the fact that it had a tram and man made tunnels pretty much lost its appeal. It reminded me of a man made Disneyland ride. I just thought it was interesting to see the buoy so close to where we were and that was Lebanon, then to the left there was a military ship. We got back on the bus, by the way I liked my seat on the bus, I could doze off in the backseat and put my legs up! Our next destination was Haifa; which is a big port city and it looks quite modern. Our stop was at the top of the Baha’i gardens. It’s magnificent and it’s certainly the best views of the city and port. It is also one of the most important Bahaii center. It seems Israel is the center where so many religions converge We had a young English Bahaii guide who was quite informative. But for some reason, this religion reminds me of the Druze religion. All we did was admire the huge well manicured gardens from the top but did not go inside the mosque. Veronica lost her phone ( that was a big to do! – it would have been so for anyone else) but fortunately Jakki help her recover it from where she left it in a bathroom. We went back to our hotel, freshened up a little and the remaining 8 women in our group had a fantastic dinner at the hotel where Staci and Joy stayed during their stay in Tel Aviv. A great time was had by all. These dinners always seem to go by so fast with all the conversations. We have to get to our room for our final packing.