It’s a Small World

So apparently the war is affecting us a little. I woke up abruptly in the night to see Heath thrashing and kicking at some imaginary opponent. Seriously, I doubt he could kick that fast if he was awake. I thought for a second he was having a seizure and would fall out of bed, but no, just a dream “too weird to talk about”, he mumbled. Sadly, he couldn’t remember it in the morning. Once my heart rate slowed I could chuckle.

Breakfast was in a bustling shop that sold only hummus. The guys in the kitchen just flew around serving up big stacks of pitas, bowls of hummus and many little pickle and condiments dishes. It was delicious! We finished with hot sweet tea and felt ready to conquer Akko.

Akko has a lot of crusader ruins and basically a whole ancient city has been excavated under the old city. It’s a fairly fascinating tour. But not Bible based, so we didn’t spend that long.

From there we headed to Mt Carmel to see if there was anything more to see than a church up there. We started the day with Navigation, but about the time we got to Carmel it went willy nilly on us again. So annoying. It was also raining pretty good so we really only felt like parking and sleeping. Instead we donned rain jackets and set off down a hiking trail to see what we could see. We slipped and squished through the mud, but it was really quite pleasant. It was a steep trail past all kinds of little caves that we peered into. When the trees would open up we could look out over the misty valley to the fields far below. There was also an IDF airfield below and we watched a bunch of fighter jets take off and head South. It was deafening and sobering. You can hardly wrap your head around the fact that this isn’t an air show or practice. This is for real!

At least I think it is. More on that later.

We slowly eased our way South to Tel Aviv, stopping near Caesarea to check out the ancient aqueduct that runs along the sea. Herod build the first section in the 1st century BC, and the Romans added to it in the 2nd century AD. Some sections are surprisingly complete and beautiful, but the part we explored today was almost completely buried in sand. We walked along the top for a ways and then descended down to the beach and spent an hour or so treasure hunting. The best things we found were white powder in a small vial and a syringe, two enormous washed up jellyfish, and a horse hooked to a radical cart. And the sunset. That was a real treasure again! So incredibly stunning.

We ate supper in the heart of Tel Aviv with Dr Lena. It was so good to see her again! We chattered and laughed and ate delicious things on wobbly plastic chairs in the middle of a construction zone. I wish like crazy we spoke the same language, but with Lena’s bit of English, Heath’s bit of Hebrew, and Google translate we did fine.

Our first guests arrive in the middle of the night, so let the adventure continue!