Blogs from North District, Israel, Middle East - page 19

After breakfast we left Tel Aviv to travel north to the ancient city of Caesarea, once the seat of Roman rule in the Middle East, built around 40 BC by Herod the Great: a Jewish king. It’s obvious that Herod had quite an ego based on the size of his port. He created a magnificent Roman city including an amphitheater, gymnasium, baths, a huge artificially protected port and a sophisticated water system that flowed from a spring 18 miles away. We even had a chance to wade through an excavated section of the underground water tunnel. We ate lunch in the quaint clean town of Zichron Ya’akov and visited the home of a Jewish 007 (a spy ring for the British in1917). We are spending the night in a hotel on Kibbutz HaGoshrim… the Catskills of ... read more

Yagur stream Middle East » Israel » The Carmel and Golan By ygallerJune 9th 2007Hiking down Yagur stream starting in Usfiyya and ending at Kibutz Yagur... read more

Today was a great day! We began the day with a hike part-way through a river - Nahal Gilabon. The trail was well marked but we decided to wade through part of the river as per Noah's directions. At the end of the hike, we ended up at a beautiful 10m high waterfall that fell into a small pond. The water was freezing but we decided to go swimming anyway and had a great time. After the hike we were pretty tired, but continued on to see Tzfat. We weren't very impressed - there wasn't much happening in the town, and the old Artists' Quarter was almost deserted. In the evening, we drove to the Eastern shore of the Kineret, and followed an off-road trail to a spot along the shore. We weren't the only ones ... read more

Today was a slightly boring day for me - I have been to both of these places previously, but neither Josh nor Noah had been, so we visited them. We still had trouble getting the car so Ori took us and his kids on a day trip. I was still sick at this point so no time was really wasted. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AVIVA!!!... read more

Part 2... Day 3- Today we drove to Zfat, in the Galilee. Zfat is one of the holiest cities in Judaism, after Jerusalem and Hebron. It is a beautiful little town on the top of a mountain, and is home to the Jewish mystics of Kabbalah. It also happens to be my most favorite place in all of Israel. You can just feel these special, spiritual, mystical powers flowing all around you. As a very religious city, where Kabbalah was developed in the 16th century, there are dozens of small synagogues, mostly after specific rabbis. We went to a few of the more important ones. First was the Abuhav Synagogue, named for Rabbi Yitzhak Abuhav, a famous rabbi from Spain who lived in the 15th century. Abuhav wanted to make it to Israel before he ... read more