A Galilee Tail: Ian Goes Northwest

After a two-day excurion to the wild northwest and two days to recover, I am here to recap by trip.

I took the train from Tel Aviv to Akko after work on Sunday night and stayed at a hostel in the old city. I took a cab from the train station to the hostel. After I told the driver that I wanted to go to a hostel, he started driving before I could close the door. So, like any passenger would do, I closed the door. Then when I closed the door, he told me that I shouldn't slam the door so hard. Hold on. Doesn't the door to a moving car close harder than a door to a stationary vehicle.

As we drove through the old city to the hostel, every kiosk or restaurant had chairs set up outside and flat screen tv's on the wall to watch the World Cup games. It is very weird to see this type of technology (I mean tvs, not chairs) in the four thousand-year old city, but it shows you how much people love their futbol.

I arrived at the Akko Gate Hostel and met my roommate, Iain (apparently, that is the original spelling of my name), who is English. He was a nice guy with an interesting story (investment banker turned journalist turned lawyer). (Mike Donelley: I got dibs on top bunk. Steve Dodds: Okay.)


I found the bathroom situation at the hostel to be most fascinating. In the bathroom, there is a sink, toilet, and shower. That's normal, right?

But there were no dividers. You could, realistically, shower and poop at the same time (multitasking).

In the morning, I toured the tourist attractions in the old city (crusader castle, Museum of Heroism, sea walls, Templar Tunnels, shuk, city walls, mosque). I was a little peeved by the amount of construction going on at some sites (notably the crusader castle and Museum of Heroism), but I didn't let it detract from my overall experience.

I started my tour in the castle. Here I am in the "reflectorium." Some think it was used as a cafeteria, I believe that crusader knights used this room for deep thinking or at least that's what I used it for. (Good things don't end with "eum" (or "ium"), they end with "mania" or "teria")


After I mozied through the castle (with my hands at my sides), I searched for the Museum of Heroism, which is in the old prison. Like any logically thinking tourist, I asked a local where this museum was located. After asking about ten people to give me directions, which were wrong, I got this classic response from a kiosknik just outside the entrance to the crusader castle.

Ian: Where is the Museum of Heroism?
Kiosknik: I am a local (whose shop is a block away from the museum), why would I know where the museum is?

Lest we forget that most of her income is dependent on museum goers and tourists.

Eventually, I found the prison and toured it, at least what I could tour. Only two rooms of the prison were open for visitors, the rest of the facility was under construction, including the cell that Zeev Jabotinsky stayed in and the cell of the founder of Ba'hai. The Museum of Heroism pays tribute to the Zionist prisoners hung in the prison and the Etzel members who died during the prison break in 1947. (How many Exodus references can I make in my blog? 17? I am going up to Safed for Shabbat, which is near Mt. Canaan, so expect another reference in that post)


For those of you that don't know, I am fascinated with the shuk. I love the hustle and bustle, the smells, the deals, the fact that you can buy anything, and, as I learned in Akko, the people you see. While rounding a corner in the Akko shuk, I ran into my friend Jeff from home. I didn't know that he was going to be in Akko. And, unlike Jerusalem, Akko isn't the place where you would expect to run into someone you know.


On the subject of shuks, maybe it's me who thinks the notion of a barber shop in a shuk is a little weird. Because so far, I am 3-for-3 in finding barber shops in shuks.

Another part of the shuk experience that I enjoy are the restaurants embedded within the shuk. The place that I ate at, Hummus Sa'id, even has their own website, but I can't find the address right now.

At one of the shops, a kid tried to sell me a copy of The DaVinci Code on DVD with the sales pitch "it's still in the theater." This would've been my chance to watch the movie without an intermission, but from what I know about bootleg videos, which I learned from Seinfeld, they are not typically the best quality.

In the early afternoon, I realized that I did a number on the Old City of Akko and decided it was time to advance northward. I wanted to stop at the Ba'hai Gardens on the way to Nahariya, but the bus driver didn't tell me when to get off, so I took the bus to Nahariya instead (that gives me a reason to go back to the Akko region, along with visiting the prison when they finish construction).

Let me tell you one thing about Nahariya. It is not the most exciting town in Israel. The beach city about 15 km from the Lebanon border offers little more than retirement homes, a beach, a tourist office that is only open in the mornings, an ancient Canaanite synagogue, which I couldn't find, and more retirement homes. I spent a couple of hours searching for a cheap place to spend the night, but the closed tourism office hampered my search.

It was getting toward the mid- to late- afternoon, and I decided to head up to Rosh Hanikra to catch the sunset. Without a place to spend the night and not worrying about it, I boarded a bus up to the cliffs at the Lebanon border. I reasoned that if I needed to, I could hitch a ride back to Nahariya and get a train back to Tel Aviv if I needed to.

As the daylight hours began to dwindle and turned to daylight minutes, I sparked up a conversation with a family, who was also watching the sunset. A husband and wife from south of Haifa were having a picnic with their son, who was doing reserve duty at the border station. They were very nice people and offered me something to eat. I explained to them my situation, and they told me that they would give me a ride to a cheap place to stay a few kilometers down the coast.


The couple dropped me off at this place called Eliavivi. It is a little beachside campsite that also has a hostel, restaurant, archaeological museum, and probably many other things that I don't know about. Some of the other people staying there described it as "Sinai without the security problems." I met a very nice, newlywed couple from the Jordan River Valley and their six-month old daughter. They were very hospitable and offered me dinner when I arrived.

Instead of sleeping in the hostel or borrowing one of Eli's tents, I thought that is would be cool just to sleep outside in my sleeping bag. Considering the hard ground and hard rock that blasted through the night from a wedding next door, I slept pretty well. There is something to be said about waking up in the morning and being so close to the sea that you worry that you didn't roll into it during your sleep.


In the morning, I jumped into the sea, read some of the my book, and kibbutzed with the Jordan River Valley residents before heading up to Rosh Hanikra again, this time to walk around the grottos.

I decided to walk along the few kilometers on the shoreline to Rosh Hanikra instead of catching a bus or taxi. It was pleasant, relaxing walk along the sandy shores. My original plan for the day was to walk along Nahal Keziv, which goes inland, but a suggestion from the people at Eliavivi changed my mind.

At Rosh Ha-Nikra, I did the grottos tour, nothing particularly notable aside from the overall sweetness of water caves.