Roman and Templar Ruins on the Coast

We left Nazareth and headed back towards the coast to go see some of the ancient cities built on the Mediterranean Sea by some of the invading armies.  The first was the town of Akko which was the last Templar stronghold in Israel.  The town has a large wall surrounding the entire city and harbor including running right out into the water to make the harbor.  We had to park outside town and walk in because the entire area inside the wall was packed with cars and people.

Since I love to climb everything I see, the first thing we did was climb the wall to get a view over the town.  Here we were able to see the trenches dug in one of the many attempts to capture the town.  However, this was only one of the trenches dug as apparently the wall was moved to use one of the trenches as its moat when the Templars came and refortified the city.  The walk down to the port was very nice with some great views out over the sea.  When we got down near the lighthouse we noticed a sign for the Templar Tunnels, which was apparently a tunnel used to move secret goods from the main castle to the port.  We paid to go in assuming that it would lead somewhere and have an interesting history.  Boy were we disappointed it was just a partially flooded tunnel with a boardwalk.  There was one room that opened up in the ceiling, but there was no explanation or way to get up there.  Apparently part of it was closed, but it was still not that interesting.

We walked along the wall that protects the town from any sea attacks heading towards the main castle.  The wall was probably 15 feet high and about 30 feet thick, with few places where you could actually see anything.  So when we got near the castle we climbed up on the mound which the castle sat for a view over the section we had just walked.  Unfortunately the main part of the castle was closed so we were not able to see the rest of the Templar fortifications.  So we took one more pass through the center of town where there were there were two churches and a mosque amid a bunch of ruins.  There was once a grand market place, public baths, and all the other things you expect in a medieval city, but today they are little more than shells of buildings.

The next day our plans were to visit the former Roman capital of Ceasearea, but we did not want to drive too far so we headed down the coast to get a little closer before we spent the night.  We drove past the large tourist town of Haifa which was about half way between our destinations in order to be a little closer in the morning.  When we got to Hadera, we started to drive around looking for a hotel.  After a couple loops of town we headed to the gas station to ask directions to the nearest hotel.  We were laughed at for the thought of staying in Hadera and told to head to Olga (the next town) because they had one hotel.  After following the directions we were given we arrived at what looked to be a hotel, however it was missing its reception.  So I got out and started to walk around when I was met by a security guard (big suprise in Israel), so I asked him and again I was laughed at because this was a timeshare where people came for a few weeks to a couple months.  This time we were told to keep heading towards Tel-Aviv and we could find places in the town about 20 km along that road called Netanya.  By this point we had invested a great deal of time in finding a hotel, so we just picked the first place we saw, which happened to be right on the beach with a great view of the sunset.  So at least our search for a hotel had a happy ending, we ending up eating Chinese takeout on our patio after watching the sunset.

The next morning we headed back to Ceasaerea to go explore the town.  It was suprisingly crowded at the gate we entered, but that was because it turns out that Ceaserea is now a cross between an archilogical site and a playground.  People come in to use the remnants of the harbor as a beach and the large grassy areas as park.  There were kids climbing around on what is left of the platform that once housed a temple to Ceasear, then a Byzantine Church, then a Mosque, and finally a Templar Church before it was leveled and left in ruins.  We took the Time Tour, which amounted to two short movies that everytime they started to explain something jumped to another subject.  It was kind of like someone took a documentry that was an hour long and pulled ten minutes out of it.  Kind of disappointing, but still interesting.

We spent the rest of the day walking through the part of Ceasaerea that was not open to the general public, this was basically all of the site outside the orginal Roman walls, but inside the later Templar walls.  Here the ruins were in better condition.  There was a large hippodrone (sports arena) that was situated right on the edge of the water.  Where the stands and shops once where a large bathing complex had been built once the games fell out of favor with the emperiors.  There was also a theather which like most ruins still had the seats, but did not have any of the large construction for the stage left.  The most impressive, though there was nearly nothing left, was the palace.  Here there was a lower and upper palace that once served as the home for the Roman governer of Israel.  It has a fantastic view of the town, and sticking out into the ocean there was pool that was built that combined fresh water with the sea water.  Today there is nearly nothing left, but picturing what it must have been like it would have been a grand sight.

That night we drove back to Jerusalem to meet Judy, our Servas host who had taken us to the Independence Day party.  She had invited us to spend the last night with her since our last attempt to stay with her did not work out.  When we arrived she took us out to get an overview of Jerusalem, which was pretty to see as day turned to night.  After we got back to the house we helped with a couple of problems like tricky printer and uncooperative mobile phones.

The next morning we returned our car and flagged down a taxi to take us to the bus that runs to the border.  Our driver spent the entire time trying to convince us that we should pay a couple hundred dollars to have him drive us to the border.  When he finally stopped to let us out we were not where we needed to be and he wanted $10 for a ride that lasted 5 minutes and was only about 4 blocks.  This was after we had agreed to the exorbitant, price of $5 before we got into the taxi.  But being charged a fortune was the name of the day.  Though the border formalities were not nearly as tight as getting into Israel, we did get charged everywhere we went.  A tax to leave the country, a fee for the 200 people who tossed our bags around 20 different passport checks and making crossing the border a general pain on our way in.  Then to take the only bus that is allowed on the bridge there was another fee, followed by one to enter Jordan.  Though we did not need to get a new visa, something that we were concerned about because we thought we had done the exit from Jordan incorrectly, which was a huge relief.  When we finally got on the other side of the border we had to walk until we found the manager of the taxis who is only concerned about his money and therefore offers the best price.  We got there and headed back to the Palace Hotel in Amman, with a general relief that we were done with our border crossings between countries that have a severe dislike of each other.

Bill