I had a plan to be picked up at noon by Shelly, my friend who lives on Kibbutz Yagur and works at the Technion, so I thought I would go downtown and find the visitors center.
I got started late, after 10 and I didn’t know how long it would take me to get there and back. I went to the bus stop and decided that I would take whichever came first, the bus or the taxi to get “downtown”. The taxi came first. I told him I wanted to go to the Visitor’s Center on Ben Yehuda Street, and he seemed very confused. He actually stopped someone on the street and asked if he spoke English to ask me where I wanted to go.
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| Christmas Tree made from plastic bottles |
When we figured it out it was determined that the Visitors Center is on Ben Gurion not Ben Yehuda. Oops, left the map in the apartment.
The taxi dropped me off in front of a sign that said “Tourist Information” but it was not apparent to me where the office was. I was walking in circles and felt so stupid. Where was this office. I asked someone and they said, oh just 10 meters up this way.
Well, the best thing was that I met a young man, 17, from Argentina. I saw him with a map in his hand and asked if he had gotten it from the visitors center.
"Yes" he said, "I’ll show you where it is".
O.k. so he and I together walked around and he couldn’t find it again so easily either. Oh well, we did find it and it was useless.
The woman gave me a map and couldn’t really give me good information on what to do in Haifa. All she said was, right up the street is the Bahai Gardens and you can take a tour at 12:00 in English. When I asked how I could get to Ceasaria, she said,
"Well, you can take a bus to Hedara, then change and wait for another bus. It’s not very easy to do. Then finally she said,
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| the bottom of the Bahai Gardens |
“here is the brochure for a private tour company you can call”.
So the young Argentine, Kevin and I walked over to the Bahai Gardens. He is in Israel visiting his uncle who lives in Karmiel, where Emily is, for 2 months until his entire family comes for his sister’s Bat Mitzvah in February. His uncle had dropped him off and was coming back for him at 5. So he had the entire day to be by himself so he was happy to meet me too. Too bad for him though I was needing to leave soon.
The Bahai Gardens has an unusual schedule. You can enter the bottom part in the morning, the tour starts at the top and you can only walk half way day if you are not Bahai.
Anyway, I walked on the bottom part with Kevin took a few photos and then got the bus back to my apartment.
Shelly picked me up at noon and told me he was going to take me to see where the fire had been in Mt. Carmel.
While driving there, you could see the stupidity of trying to take a bus up this narrow, windy mountain road.
There was no escape. Although they didn’t anticipate what would happen because the fire started on the other side of the mountain, but the winds came through the canyon and swiftly changed the direction of the fire and the bus had no chance. So sad.
The area is so beautiful and so much of it was scorched.
Kibbutz Bet Oren, which was at the top of the hill was burned only on one side and didn’t really have much damage. The prison, at the top of the hill which was where the bus was going to evacuate prisoners wasn’t touched at all. Those of you who live in Santa Barbara know all too well how the winds can change in an instance without giving firefighters an option of what to do.
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| the memorial |
There were many people at the place where the bus was engulfed with flames looking and taking photos. Apparently it’s quite a tourist attraction now to come and see the memorial that has been put there. We walked around a bit to see the other areas that were hurt as well. The weather was magnificent and the views from here incredible. We could see to the Mediterranean Sea and all the way to Ceasaria which is about 1/2 hour south.
We drove around a bit in the mountains where I saw the prison and the Druze village, where Shelly pointed out the garbage dump where he thought the fire had started.
On our way to the Technion we had a magnificent view north of Haifa where you could see almost to the Lebanon border.
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| view looking north toward Lebanon |
We then went to the Technion where we had a quick lunch and then I had a tour of Shelly’s lab. He works on developing purification methods for waste water. It’s a rather unassuming lab but they do a lot of important work.
After my tour he took me back to my apartment showing me a few more points of interest along the way.
I found a Swiss restaurant that was recommended called Viola just up at the center. I had spatzel, which is like gnocci, and salad. It was a nice meal.
Another fine day.
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