We left Tel Aviv in our newly rented hot rod and headed up the coast to the ancient city of Caesarea. Built in the 1st century AD by Herod the great, Caesarea was to be the new gleaming jewel and important commercial port for the Roman's government in Palestine. The building of the port and city required some incredible feats of engineering, including the construction of the breakwater. The shoreline which was to be the location of this new amazing harbor was not suitable for docking ships as there was no protection from the pounding waves of the Mediterranean. To fix this problem, Herod had massive wooden boxes built and floated out to sea. The boxes were placed in strategic positions and filled with volcanic ash. As the crates filled and sunk to the bottom, the volcanic ash hardened like concrete, creating a base on which Herod could build massive walls to protect the ship as they came into dock. It was an amazing and complex process. In the end, the port was finished and Caesarea lived up to its hype becoming one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean coast. Another attraction to Ceasarea was an art gallery in the newly built visitors center. The gallery featured "soft art" or "soft painting" which is a technique founded in Israel. The "paintings" were actually comprised of pieces of colored fabric which were "poked" into position on the canvas. Of course the technique is far more complex but the result is the same. The pictures were vibrant and colorful but sadly a little out of our price range. We continued on up to the coast for a brief stop in the city of Haifa to see the Baha'i gardens, a spectacular multi-tiered garden (19 tiers to be exact) that stretches up the hillside for kilometers (or so it seems). The Baha'i gardens surround a temple built in honor of Mizra Hussein Ali an important figure of the Baha'i faith. One of the pilgrimages the Baha'i faithful must make is to walk up the 1400 plus steps which cut through the immaculately manicured lawns, trees, flowerbeds and past gushing fountains to the temple. Currently the world's youngest religion (Baha'i)has about 5 million followers world-wide. Our final stop-over on the way to the Sea of Galilee was in Akko, a predominately Arab community just up the coast. Unfortunately, we were lead astray by the lonely planet and missed all the attractions worth seeing there as they closed at 4 and not 5 o'clock (as mentioned in the book, thanks again LP!). We did however catch a spectacular sunset from the walls of the old town. With not much day left, we headed for Tiberias on the edge of the Sea of Galilee.
Pictures:
1- Sunset in Akko
2- Baha'i gardens
3- Jeff tackles cactus in Baha'i
4- More Baha'i
5- Soft art
6- Hippodrome at Caesarea
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