We arrived in Israel very excited and happy to be there, Danny perhaps happier than me since I had never thought much about visiting in the past. We were inspired by our daughter's Birthright trip experience to add it to our big trip so there we were.
We had pre-scheduled several locations around this small country and our final destination was two nights in Haifa, a northern coastal city - friends had told us it was really beautiful and we knew it was on the Mediterranean which we enjoyed in Tel Aviv. Well Haifa turned out to be a lot larger than we had imagined. All in all, had we known how busy it was, we would have stayed an extra day or two at Inbar (or anywhere else we stayed) and skipped it. But who knew? We were there too short a time to find any of the prettier spots we'd read about - We did eat one evening near Bahai Gardens but did not do more than take a few photos since reservations to enter the park were required. And we went to a terrific beach the day before we left.
We rented an AirBnB apartment, allegedly a 1 bedroom, with "expansive views of the Mediterranean" which turned out to be located inconveniently on a hillside (no surprise here) alley which proved to be difficult to manoeuvre in the car (a very small Fiat 500) and really far from the beach, restaurants or anything other than a good convenience store. The apartment was part of a two family historic property but was really just one room not a real one bedroom. The kitchen and bathroom (yes, these were very well equipped) were separate and actually together larger than the main room! The air conditioner in the main room leaked water (on my pillow). We were hardly sleeping anyway (paying too close attention to the news) so it wasn't much of an issue. As for the expansive views - Nuclear cooling towers - not what we were expecting. Add to this our increasing anxiety with the rockets being lobbed over by Hamas into southern locations - the day we got to Haifa, a rocket was intercepted in Tel Aviv (airport location), and the day we left, another reached close to Haifa. Our hosts were very friendly and pleasant but at this point in time, we were so looking forward to the flight out (if there was a flight out with all the delays and cancellations the night before we flew), it was difficult to accept the hospitality.
Interesting note - when being interviewed by Israeli TSA at the airport, they thanked us as Americans for the US funding of the missile defence system, the Iron Dome, which was activated, saving many lives by intercepting and destroying enemy rockets. Each incoming rocket requires Israel to fire two intercepting missiles to shoot it down at a cost $100,000 (each). So far, dozens, no hundreds, have been intercepted and shot down saving many lives.
Expansive view to the right of our apartment - Mediterranean in the distance
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Close up to make sure you get the idea and yes, it's a nuclear cooling tower |
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Typical Haifa apartment buildings of which there are many - we overlooked this one from our AirBnB location |
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City lit up at night |
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