Good bye Nahariya, Hello Jerusalem! 07/08/06

Sadly, today I left Nahariya, but joyfully, my destination was Yerushalaim. Carlos and family and myself walked over to shabbat service with the group from Nahariya. I stopped by just to say hello. I was supposed to be in Jerusalem by 6pm, so I had to leave soon since I wanted to stopped by Haifa.

Before leaving, I decided to take a few more photos. It was Shabbat morning and Nahariya was pretty quiet. Not too cars cruising around. For the most part, the few people that were walking around were the religious people. Unfortunately, I made my turn onto the highway to Haifa leaving Nahariya behind, but carrying with me new memories and holding on to the old ones still. After Akko, I got to Haifa fairly quickly.

In Haifa, I made my way towards the Bahai temple which is located up in the slopes of the Carmel Mountains. It's a beautiful building with exquisite gardens around it. The Bahai faith was founded in 1863 by Mirza Husayn, a Persian who was later known as Bahaullah. Haifa serves as the world center of this religion. If you want to learn more about this religion, check out: http://info.bahai.org/bahaullah-teachings.html.

Anyway, I'm not a Bahai, but the temple and the view from up there is definitely worth checking out. You can see the lower city and port area of Haifa and also appreciate the residential area, which lies on the mountain. Haifa is very old and was developed as a port in the 30's to replace the 2000 year old port of Akko.

I spent a while up there. I couldn't get enough of the scenery. I walked around the garden because the temple is only opened early in the morning for the main public. It was, however, opened for worshippers. I was already inside the temple many years ago.

Well, I headed towards Yerushalaim by the way of Tel Aviv. I followed my friend's directions to his house. His name is Tim King. I took the Adar exit, which took me to an Israeli Settement called Mevaseret Zion. It's a pretty and fairly new village from where you get a grandiose view of Jerusalem on top of the hill beyond. I knew in a short while I had taken the wrong exit, but I kept driving around to look at the little town. I headed back to the highway and returned to the previous exit, which led me into Abu Gosh, which is an Israeli Arab village. I passed it and continued on the winding road about a mile or so towards the north. I ended up on top of the hill in an Israeli village called Har Adar, which means Hill of the Eternal Flame. (By the way, on the way up to Har Adar, I passed a sign that said Kiriat Anavim. Anavim means grapes and it reminded me of my favorite - grape ice popsicle.) Har Adar was my home for the next three days. It's a fairly new settlement inside the Green line border. There's a lot of construction going on.

I hadn't seen Tim King since 1991, when I used to work for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. He was one of the founders. If you want more info check out: www.icej.org You can get great information about what's going on in Israel. I got my own room with a view towards Jerusalem. Awesome!