Haifa, Israel's third largest city, is in the north of the country and has quite a lovely physical setting, tucked in between a mountain and the sea. That doesn't save it, however, from being almost riduculously ugly. Susan, Loryl and I didn't intend on spending a lot of time there during our trip to Israel in 2007, and after seeing the downtown, we were grateful. Most of the photos in this group are not of Haifa, but of the many other sites and towns we visited in northern Israel.
Many of the photos below were taken by Susan, and her photos, intermingled with mine, are an invaluable addition to this page and to my memories of the trip. Thanks very much, Susan, for hovering behind the ever-rushing-forward Loryl and Bob and snapping us and other things.
Photo List (Total 279 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Haifa city (45 photos) - We really spent only a little time in Haifa, and these photos show the few things we did. Some of them are car photos from the trip in and out of town, but our hotel and area around it had a great view of the famous Baha'i Gardens and of the central city. We took the Carmelit, a sort of half-subway/half funicular, down to Paris Square in the city centre, which only proved how unbelievably ugly the central city is.
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Caesarea (38 photos) - Caesarea is a former Roman city halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa on the Mediterranean coast. It ceased to flourish after Arab conquest in 640 and is now a ruin and a National Park. We stopped here on our first drive from Tel Aviv, on our way to Haifa.
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Zikhron Ya'akov and Daliyat Al-Karmel (26 photos) - Two very different towns. Zikhron Ya'akov is a small tourist town with a few wineries and a charming main street, where we sampled a bit of Israeli wine and strolled. It was in ZY that Loryl and I conspired to take highway 672 into Haifa, without mentioning it to Susan, who was usually trying to keep us on a schedule. That's how we ended up seeing Daliyat Al-Karmel, a Druze town of surprising size and complexity on the highway. We spent at least an hour lost there, with very few English speaking people around, and Susan's schedule was in tatters.
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Akko (54 photos) - Akko is an old fortress city just north of Haifa (not that far from Lebanon). It is picturesque with some tourist infrastructure, but also pleasantly rundown and real at the same time. Susan wasn't that impressed.
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Sea of Galilee (63 photos) - Around the sea of Galilee we went to several sites, including the Mount of Beatitudes, the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, the Church of the Primacy of Peter, and Capharnaum. We also had fish in Ein Gev, and spent the night in Tiberias.
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Nazareth (36 photos) - We stopped in Nazareth, home to Mary and Joseph, on our way south. The town is mostly Arabic, though there is a large Christian population as well. This was all very welcome on a Friday, when Jewish businesses are closed for the Sabbath. I chose to wear shorts, so I couldn't go into the religious sites, but I was a bit religioused out anyways, from our jaunt around the Galilee. So I climbed hills into the residential enclaves of the city, while Susan and Loryl explore the churches and whatnot.
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Armageddon (17 photos) - The site of Tel Megiddo, or Armageddon, a National Park and contains ruins and the possibility of walking through the old water system for the settlement. As a sign in the interpretation centre rather dramatically indicated: Right here, beside you and around you, man's most important conflict will take place in the last of days - the great and final war. In the New Testament, St. John predicts that the decisive battle between the forces of good and evil, to end all destruction and persecution, will take place at Megiddo, or in its other name, ARMAGEDDON. In spite of this, the gift shop was just OK.
