Day one in Israel

Starting in Tel Aviv we headed north to Caesarium.  The country is obviously dry, but a lot is irrigated and growing crops.  Our guide commented that all the trees we saw had been planted.  Caesaria, a roman town hosting a palace of Herod Agrippa, had been the site of the first recorded conversion of a gentile to Christianity. All that visibly remains of the town are the theatre, the foundations of the palace and the hippodrome, but it was a good break in the trip from Tel Aviv.

Next we stopped at Megiddo, a tel (a hill created by building towns on the ruins of previous towns) which dates back to prehistoric times and includes an altar dated around 3000BC, possibly used for humen sacrifice - our guide does like good stories.  One sector of the tel has been excavated and  clearly shows the layers.  While we did not see it due to preservation efforts There is an interesting water supply system where a spring outside the town wall was accessed through a tunnel system to provde a secure supply during a seige. 

Lunch was provided in a restaurant in a Druze village on Mt Carmel. The multiplicity and variety of religous sects and their various dress codes here are staggering. We continued to Haifa and looked down over the gardens of the Bahaii Temple.  The gardens are set on a large acerage on the side of the steep hill above the town and are terraced.  A little further north we visited Acre where we walked through the old town within the old crusader fort down to the port which is now only used for small boats.

That evening we stayed at a hotel on a kibbutz.  The kibbutz was founded by a group mainly made up from the Jewish children smuggled to England before WWII.  We were given a talk outlining how it was set up and how it has changed over the years, but still remains a community where there is no personal property and all needs are provided by the community.