Israel's Mediterranean coast

mosaic from Roman villa at Caesarea

Saturday morning, we left our hotel in Amman at the awful hour of 3:30 a.m. because the airlines require you to be at the airport 3 hours before flight departure times.  Which is quite ridiculous since you spend 2 1/2 of those 3 hours sitting around wishing you were still asleep. 

Caesarea amphitheater

We arrived in Tel Aviv at 7:30 a.m., picked up our rental car and headed north.  Our first stop was at Caesarea, a Roman ruin right on the Mediterranean.  King Herod decided to build a port here in the first century BC to encourage trade throughout the Roman Empire.  He had 2 large breakwaters built to enclose a harbor and added a typical Roman city, complete with a hippodrome for chariot races and a theater.  A prosperous city grew up around the port, but suffered many wars and, ultimately, collapse from war and earthquake.

view of Haifa from Mt. Carmel

I first visited Caesarea more than 3 decades ago, with my kids, and loved it for its history, beautiful mosaics, fallen columns and spectacular setting, so I was looking forward to a new look.  There has been a lot of restoration over the last 30 years, not much of it well done.  The worst part is that the area has become almost a low-end theme park, with shops and cafes filling up a big part of the ruins and extending out onto the old Roman breakwater.  The reconstruction of the hippodrome and theater make them look like like faux ruins, with too much bright limestone rock used to fill in the holes left by cannon balls, fire and earthquake.  The mosaics are still beautiful, but in grave need of protection.  The movie that is supposed to give you a bit of the history of the site is pretty bad, with too much noise and zinging objects to be of much interest, though it does give you a small idea of the history.  I don't think I can recommend a visit to Caesarea when there are better options in Israel (more on that in another blog).

Bahai shrine and garden, Haifa

olives in the Acre bazaar

Onward to Haifa, a major Israeli port on the Mediterranean.  It has been a port and fishing village (no longer a village, but Israel's third largest city) for more than 3000 years.  The big attraction is the Bahai Shrine and gardens on the slopes of Mt. Carmel.  We stopped to visit and to climb Mt. Carmel, which is actually a long walk up a steep hill on a sidewalk that has increasingly impressive views of the harbor the higher you climb.  If you love gardens or are a Bahai, this is worth a visit.  But, I wouldn't go out of my way to see it otherwise.

old city wall, Acre

Acre was our last stop before driving east across Israel to the Sea of Galilee, our base for the next 2 days.  The Old City is right on the Mediterranean and has a busy Arab bazaar full of shops plus a huge Crusader Castle from the 11th century.  We enjoyed our stroll through the alleyways of the Arab quarter until a heavy rainstorm drove us off.  Some of the old castle walls are in the middle of the bay, bashed on our visit by waves and foam.  Fishing boats fill the harbor, so clearly this is still an important part of the economy.  We watched a tourist boat circling around inside the breakwater with partiers on board.  It was too rough to go out of this small area in a little boat. 

fragment of castle in the midst of waves