Tuesday 6/27/06 - Tel Aviv, Caesaria, Haifa, Rosh Hanikra, Kibbutz Nof Ginosaur – Day 2
After breakfast on Tuesday we went to Independence
Hall. We heard a recording of the speech David Ben Gurion made on
Then we went to the place where Itzhak Rabin was
murdered. Note the date in the picture on the right below – 4·11·95 –
that would be
Next stop - Caesarea. Naftali, our tour guide, gave a long talk about history which I missed because I was dealing with Benjamin, who was suffering from a combination of time change and not enough sleep and not enough food. We went into the Caesarea ampitheater and heard more talk and took a picture of the whole group.
On the left below is the stage at which the people in the seats (in the picture at the right, above) are looking. The picture below in the middle is under this stage. The picture on the right is one of the many statues at Caesaria.
I learned why, while most people pronounced Caesaria “See-SAR-EE-ah,” I was saying “KAY-SAR-ee-ah.” The first is the English word, while the second is the Hebrew. I must have picked up the Hebrew pronunciation when I was in Israel in 1976. More pictures of Caesaria.
We wandered around and then got back on the bus and drove to a mall for lunch. We arrived at the mall about 1:30 and everyone was on edge from hunger (and tiredness and time change.) The boys had pizza, Marc had a schwarma pita and I had a falafel pita. Then we drove to Haifa and saw the city from the overlook (see picture below on left). We stopped at a place above the Bahai Temple (see picture on right) and then drove to the base of the Bahai Temple. It’s a beautiful site – how it’s built into the hillside and surrounded by gardens. I missed a picture from the bottom, because we didn’t stop, just drove by.
Then off to Rosh Hanikra. Nikra are grottos. We took a sky tram down to the grottos. While on the sky tram, we saw a Rock Hyrax – I thought it was a hyrax, but I wasn’t sure (since I’ve never seen one in the wild before.) So I asked the tram operator what it was. He didn’t know the English name, so I asked the Hebrew – he said it was a “שפן סלע” (“shafan selah”) – which translates word for word as “rock rabbit” – but I talked to our guide who confirmed that it was a rock hyrax. Rosh Hanikra is right on the Lebanese border so after we went through the grottos, we went to the border and took pictures.
Then back on the bus – next stop: Kibbutz Nof Ginosar. We arrived ~6:30, settled in, walked around and had dinner. Our favorite part of the accommodations were the barn swallows hanging out on the ledges above the doors to our rooms.
After dinner, we let the boys relax a little and then everyone went to bed.
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