Exploring

Haifa, Israel

The Bahai Gardens in Haifa are a big drawcard to this coastal Israeli city. We entered from the top where there is an amazing view down the carefully manicured terraced gardens to the Shrine of the Bab and indeed right over the city and out to sea. The shrine with the golden dome is for the ‘Bab’, the messenger or prophet who preceded the founder of the Bahai faith Bahá’u’lláh. More on Bahá’u’lláh in my post on Acre which is home to his shrine. […]

Caesarea, Israel

Getting to the ancient port city of Caesarea was not easy– first of all it was hard to make it clear where we wanted to go as we were saying ‘Seh-zeh-ree-ah’ but the locals pronounce it ‘Qasaria’ with a hard c. I had to write it down to be understood! After switching trains correctly we arrived at the nearest train station to the ancient site and headed for the bus stop, only to discover that the bus left about two hours later … approximately […]

Acre, Israel

Music greeted us as we wandered through the old city of Acre (Akko), on the Mediterranean coast in northern Israel. We found ourselves at the water’s edge on our first evening in the city listening to someone playing the bagpipes and another a drum, young men dancing and families clapping. It was a great atmosphere! The Old City of Acre was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site for its substantial preservation of Medieval Crusader buildings and the 18th and 19th century Muslim town which […]

Golan Heights

Internationally recognised as Syrian territory, the Golan Heights has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. Antony was keen to see the area so we hired a car for a day from Tiberias and set off to the north east of the Sea of Galilee. First stop Mount Bental for amazing panoramic views of the area. After Israel captured Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, it was under Israeli military administration but then in 1981 Israel passed a law to administer it as […]

Sea of Galilee

Our 3 week housesit was up and it was time to leave Jerusalem, a city we had become so familiar with. We took a bus to Tiberias, located by the Sea of Galilee. We walked uphill from the bus station to our air bnb – which had sensational views. All we wanted to do was stay on the verandah and look out at the lake… known by locals as Kinneret or Lake Tiberias. Our host was a lovely Jewish woman who greeted us warmly, […]

Jerusalem – other stuff

So I’ve already written a few posts about Jerusalem… but there is a fair bit more that I want to mention that just doesn’t fit under the city’s history, gates, museum, Jewish, Muslim or Christian posts. So here goes some words about a few random things… Guns. I could not get over the amount of guns everywhere. And we’re not just talking small pistols in holsters attached discretely to the belt but full on semi-automatic weapons flopping over the shoulder as casually as a […]

Ramallah, Palestine

Ramallah, just 10km north of Jerusalem, has become Palestine’s de-facto capital, home to the Palestinian parliament, government ministries and the offices of the President and Prime Minister. Closely associated for me with the Intifada and Palestinian resistance, Ramallah is today the most affluent and liberal city in Palestine and the cultural hub of the West Bank, with many famous Palestinian activists, poets, musicians and artists residing here. We took a Palestinian bus from Jerusalem for the short trip, without much of a plan of […]

Israel Museum

‘Israel Museum’ is a bit of a misnomer as there are several museums and art galleries in the one place as well as sculptures and models outside. We spent most of a day here during our stay in Jerusalem, starting at the model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period. This was a model of the ancient city at its peak just before the Great Revolt in 66 CE when it was destroyed. The model has a scale of 2cm = 1 metre and […]

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Famous as the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem is a small city in Palestine, whose residents are living with the severe inconvenience and economic impacts of a huge wall that Israel has erected. Not only does it impair residents ability to commute to work in Israel and the West Bank, it cuts many residents off from their own farm land. 🙁 It is illegal for Israelis to travel to Bethlehem (or any other town in Palestine), but plenty of tourists make the short trip from […]

Jerusalem: A walk through 4000+ years of history

Jerusalem is one of the most deeply contested cities on earth and hasn’t done a great job of living up to its name, meaning ‘City of Peace’. In its long history it has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times and destroyed twice (source). Although it is no longer physically divided – with the walls and barbed wire coming down in 1967, boundaries and divisions still exist among its people. How its future will play out with two very […]