Haifa and Acre (Akko)
We started the day with a bus ride around Haifa, the third-largest city in Israel. It’s a port city and a holy city in the Bahá’í faith - but it’s illegal for Israeli citizens to live as a Bahá’í here. You can be here as a volunteer at the shrine and gardens, but you must be a citizen of someplace other than Israel. The other (and even more holy) city to the Bahá’í is Acre, which is also in Israel. That’s gotta suck for them. Anyway, the Bahá’í make pilgrimages to both cities to visit the holy sites. The site in Haifa is the gardens and they’re gorgeous.
Reminder: you can click an image to open it fully on your screen without needing to scroll
The above pic is only half the gardens. There are nine terraces (seen in that photo) then the temple with the gold dome, then nine more terraces below the dome. We didn’t get down to see them from there, so here’s a pic of that half from the interwebs:
FYI: that slope that the gardens ascend? It’s Mount Carmel. Yes, that Mt Carmel, site of Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal. If you don’t remember the story, here goes:
Israel had been three years without rain and Elijah figured it was because they were worshipping the wrong god. There were worshippers of Baal and some goddess whose name I can’t remember and Elijah told them that they all needed to worship the one true God and to show which of their gods that was, they’d have a contest.
First, they’d both need to slaughter a helpless animal (in this case, a bull) as a sacrifice. Then they’d build a sacrificial altar, but wouldn’t light a fire under it. Instead, they’d get their god to do that for them. So the Baal boys went first and killed the bull and made the altar and danced around for awhile, but nothing happened.
Then Elijah put his dead bull on his altar and just to show off a bit, doused the whole thing with water first, then said a prayer and fire came from the sky and consumed it all: the animal, the altar, the water, and even the sand under it. The people were impressed and decided to worship Elijah’s god as the true God.
Aaaaaaand then Elijah, fresh from winning the contest and converting the people, had his God slaughter the prophets of Baal, because he was totally a dick like that.
And presto! Mount Carmel became this super trendy location to name your religious thing after. For example, if you wondered why, in the movie Sister Act, Maggie Smith referred to their group as “Carmelite nuns” this is the Carmel that name comes from. But I digress.
The top of Mount Carmel has all the views and thus all the expensive houses. This was actually the first large section of Israel we went through that wasn’t strewn with litter and graffiti…. but you have to beware of wild boars, so there’s always a downside.
From the gardens of the Bahá’í , we hopped back on the bus and went to the nearby city of Acre, or Akko. The Bahá’í also have a temple and gardens here, but we’re switching over to Christianity now and the Crusades. It seems that Acre, a walled city that is one of the oldest continually-inhabited cities on earth (it’s been going non-stop since around 1800 BCE or so), was home to a big fortress for the Knights Templar.
Yeah, that’s impressive. But not half as impressive as all the rooms underneath it.
gathering room for the knights
Dining hall - absolutely spectacular and huge.
All around the area, you’d see these round stones used for decoration. They were ammunition for catapults.
After wandering around the fortress for awhile, we headed over to the market - a traditional “Arab market”, according to the description of our tour, which looks much, much better in my pictures than it did in person. The photos don’t really show the claustrophobia, fear of pickpockets, or unusual smells.
The back streets of the market led to the Templar Tunnel, which was only discovered in 1994. They aren’t sure what the tunnel was used for, but it connected the fortress to the port, right underneath the town.
Then from under the city to over it. We climbed the ramp to the ramparts that surround the city.
On top of the wall, there are cannons, used to keep Napoleon out of the city. It worked. Napoleon never breached the city. He did make it past the outer wall, but never got past the inner wall.
OH! We also saw a Turkish bath. I almost forgot about it, because it was really boring.
After Acre, it was back to the bus for the ride back to the ship.
Gotta hit the sack early tonight. Tomorrow is big. The tour is 13.5 hours long and has the potential to be the highlight of the entire trip. Stay tuned!