Sunday-January 16-Rainy day-Ein Hod-Karmi’el
What to do today. My last day here and the weather is very iffy. I thought about going to Tzfat and then to Karmi’el but the bus ride to Tzfat was hours. I didn’t really want to sit on a bus for 4 hours and only have a few hour visit in Tzfat. I’d wanted to do something and then get to Karmi’el because Emily had a few things of mine and I wanted to see her one last time. We still hadn’t decided whether or not to go to the basketball game but it was looking like not.
My other option was to go to Ein Hod, the artist colony outside of Haifa and I knew it wasn’t going to be so easy to get there either.
What I had discovered on the internet was that the best way to get there was to go to Hof Ha Carmel (central bus/train station) and take a taxi. I knew from the day I went up to Mt. Carmel approximately where Ein Hod was and figured a taxi wouldn’t be too expensive.
I had done a load of laundry yesterday and the rain came pouring down about an hour after I hung the clothes up to dry. My only option was to leave them and hope the sun would come out and they would dry. Yes, the sun did come out and I got lucky. I wasn’t sure what I would do if the sun hadn’t come out.
I walked up to Cafe In on Hanassi Street for breakfast and decided I would come back to take the clothes down before going to Ein Hod.
After I took the clothes down (and it’s a good thing I did) I got on a bus to Hof Ha Carmel and easily found a taxi who said he’d charge me 70 shekels. O.k. I didn’t think that was too bad and what choice did I have. Unfortunately, this taxi driver really didn’t know where he was going. I saw that he was driving up the mountain toward Bet Oren, where I had been earlier in the week and knew this couldn’t be correct. I started to say this wasn’t correct and he got out his GPS and said, yeah yeah I know where it is. The rain started coming down and we were now in the Druze village. Time for my lifeline. I called Shelly and fortunately he answered. I told him the situation and asked if he could talk with the taxi driver and explain how to get to Ein Hod. Not only that he looked up the weather satellite and told me it was only going to be raining for another half hour. Thank goodness for Shelly. This little mishap took nearly an hour; when I returned to the train station later with a direct route it only took 15 minutes.
Oh well. So I arrive in Ein Hod and it seemed rather quiet. The driver had no idea where to let me off, clearly he had never been here before. He drove a bit down the road from the entrance and found what looked like the center so I got out of the car. I still only paid him the 70 shekels and he said “sorry”. At least he knows where it is now.
The rain had stopped but I found that most of the artist shops were closed. I found an open gallery (turns out to be the largest one) that had lots of interesting work: jewelry, paintings, photography, sculpture, etc. I appreciated the camera with the film coming out of it. Is this an antique now?
So sad no more film. I came out of the gallery and walked to the left a bit down the road.
In the next open gallery I met a woman Lea who told me this was her and her husband Dan Ben-Arye’s gallery. She told me that many of the studios were closed today and that most of the studios are only open on Saturday. Really. She makes hand painted silk scarves, jewelry and a few other things and her husband is a painter. They also had a few other artists work for sale. I asked her about the fire because I had heard many of the studios burned down. She told me than yes several did and the biggest loss was the Nisco Museum of mechanical musical instruments. While I was talking with her, the man who runs this museum came in. He said the museum would be up and running by March 1. I guess I wasn’t going to be able to see that. Too bad. Lea encouraged me to walk around and go to the ceramics studio where they are second generation potters. Which I did. I met one of the 2nd generation potters (there are two women, they are twins) who is the daughter of the founders of Ein Hod. She had a wonderful view from her studio.
I also found the Ein Hod cafe was opened and decided to stop for a coffee.
I realized the time and I had told Emily that I would come to Karmi’el. It was after 1:00 and there was no way I was going to make the 1:15 train. I relaxed and thought I would get the 2:15 train. However, this required that I ask someone to call a taxi for me to get me to the train station. I walked backed to Lea’s gallery and asked her to call for me. A real day for transportation.
Well the problem was that Emily told me she only had a three hour window for my visit and by this time had decided that she and her friends couldn’t go to the basketball game. I had kind of figured it wasn’t going to work out. I was o.k. with not going the weather was bad and it was going to be very difficult to get there and back.
However, I was already in motion to go to Karmi’el heading for the train. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan on how I was going to get back. I got the train and the sherut easily enough to Karmi’el, because I had done it already once. I met Emily when I got off the sherut. She took me to have a falafel. My first and only one during the entire visit to Israel.
We had a little more time before Emily needed to be at her work and she wanted an ice cream. Gotta love the ice cream in Israel. She thought I could take a sherut back to Haifa and that maybe there was a bus that went to but she had no idea when the bus was going and since I hadn’t thought about how I was going to get back I had never looked up the bus schedule either.
When we saw a bus I got on and asked the driver if there was a bus to Haifa and he said yes in 10 minutes and it is bus #232. Great so we’ll just wait here and the bus will come. NOT.
The next thing we know, the lady standing next to us said, “oh no the bus doesn’t stop here in the afternoon only in the morning. You need to go across the street.”
As she is finishing her sentence we see the bus across the street and go flying through the street (dodging cars in the rain). Unfortunately, I didn’t make it (the bus). We were able to find a sherut. I was dripping wet but inside a vehicle. We made sure with the sherut driver that I would be dropped off at the Lev Ha Mefratz, the central bus station, because I didn’t want to be dropped off where we had been dropped the few days before in the middle of Hadar.
The one thing you should know is that the sherut’s don’t stop IN the bus station only NEAR the bus station. I had no idea really what that meant and I was hoping the rain would stop before we got there because I knew I was going to have to walk some distance. True to form,the sherut stopped on the road way outside the bus station. Fortunately, the rain had stopped when I arrived and I started walking toward the bus station but not really knowing how to get into it. A man who got off the sherut with me said, “no, this way”.
So I followed him.
Many buses go to the Carmel center and I found one and took it. When I arrived on Hanassi Street I quickly found a bus #3 for Derech Hayam and it was a good thing because it had started to rain again. I was so glad to get back to the apartment and extremely happy I had thought to take down the clothes before I left.
I ate the half a sandwich I had left from my morning’s breakfast,
wrote a bit and then had to get my bags packed up to leave.
Saying goodbye to Haifa was o.k. with me.
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