Blogs from Haifa, Haifa District, Israel, Middle East - page 4

img=https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=29ecb9dad9&view=att&th=1404d31eb0c6a312&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=f_hjzb3qqy1&zw img=http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-prn2/c112.40.497.497/s160x160/226663_1877200502682_5136569_n.jpg By Sharon Amov and Earl Shugerman: Sharon is an eighty six year old widow and recent immigrant to Israel. I immigrated to Israel at the age of fifty nine alone as well. She is from California. My home was in Colorado. Below Sharon tells her story. My dear husband died a few years ago. I was desolate. The loneliness was overwhelming. I missed him terribly. For many years I struggled to regain my balance, and then I decided to move to Israel, to live near my daughter and family. They made aliyah or immigration to eretz Israel fifteen years ago. I remember my flight to Israel, peering out of the airplane window, viewing the outline ... read more

Good thing we were with locals for our stay in Haifa, because otherwise we wouldn't have had a fantastic hike down a valley in the middle of the city. Apparently you can buy a map of Israel with all the major hiking trails on it. When you're walking, there are colour coded trail signs so that you don't get lost, so you don't even need the map if you know where to go. Iftach, Alitta's friend who we stayed with, brought us to one such path only 10 minutes from his house. We walked past a primary school and then began our trek down into a valley, which is quite steep. When we got to the bottom of the hill, deep in the valley, we saw the natural spring where Iftach had planned for us to ... read more

We spent some days in Haifa. There we did many things! We went to the Bahai center. It is a beautiful place with many elaborate gardens with fountains. There are statues of hawks, peacocks, and eagles. There are breathtaking colors...and at the end...is a beautiful golden shrine. All the gardens are symmetrical to represent how everyone in mankind is equal. We also went to a theater festival, but most of it was rained out by a huge storm with thunder lightning and hail! We were still able to see two plays, though, and they were great! The first one was called “Japanese Garden.” It was a play using mostly no words with dancing and electronics to show the serenity of a Japanese garden. The other show was “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It was amazing. Even though ... read more

Jack had meetings all day, so I headed back to Tel Aviv by train to go the the Art Museum and the Port. Traveling by train in Israel is easy and cheap. A round trip ticket from Haifa to Tel Aviv is 53 schekels or $15 and only takes an hour. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is wonderful. There was a huge exhibit (159 photos) of Yossi Breger - "And there was evening And there was morning, One Day". It was terrific and I was sorry that Jack wasn't with me. They also have a small, but very high quality collection of paintings from the Impressionist period through today. There were some wonderful paintings by artists I had never heard of, Alexander Archipenko, Max Pechstien and Keevan Dongen. There was a pen and ink collection ... read more

I take the train to Haifa, which only takes about an hour and twenty minutes. It's Friday afternoon, and by the time I arrive in Haifa, the streets are pretty deserted, and no shops are open. There's only very few restaurants open, most of them Arab-owned. I eat a falafel in Wadi Nisnas, a very old and picturesque Arab quarter. There's a maybe 18-20 year old guy hanging around, who speaks American English, but also Arabic, with the locals. I'm not really sure if he's Israeli or American and Jewish or Arab, but he looks like Adam Sandler's aborted conjoined twin fetus grown up with the worst acne I've ever seen on anybody and an overbite that would put every Dutch person to shame. He wears a shirt that says 'American National Guard - established 1645' ... read more