I know, I know, it’s a corny title. And most people will read this and think, “what’s so special about turning 21? You’ve been legal since May!” Both of those things are true: I HAVE been legal since May, and the title IS corny. But this is 21, so forgive me my jokes. Turning 21 a week before I leave Israel has given me a chance to reflect on most of my summer internship, and due to a three-day weekend, explore a little bit more of Israel’s north.
I have to start by acknowledging the fact that one of my friends from university (who for privacy reasons will remain nameless) flew all the way to Israel for a week to celebrate with me. Working through the process of booking flights and helping her understand travel in Israel made me realize how lucky I am to have friends who are willing and able to literally fly halfway across the world for me. And then there are the friends I’ve made while on this program in Haifa- my core group (who will also remain nameless) who explored Israel with me and truly made this past weekend one to remember.
Thursday night, my office had an event until about 10 PM, so I took my friend from the US to the office with me for it. As the office regularly does, we hosted a cultural night with all of the current course participants so we could all get a taste of each others’ music and dance. After a few hours of food and cultural exchange, we returned to the apartment in downtown Haifa and rang in 21 at one of the many restaurants in the area. The next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed for the trip to Tel Aviv.
Traveling to Tel Aviv should be simple, but on this day it was decidedly not. Due to Orthodox Jews controlling the Transportation Ministry in Israel, the national railway is not allowed to operate trains or carry out repair work on Shabbat. This meant that all throughout Friday, crews were repairing a stretch of track between Binyamina and Hadera, causing disruption of service to Tel Aviv. Rather than comfortably sitting on the train for an hour and a half, we were herded on to shuttle busses at Binyamina and back onto a new train at Hadera. Frustratingly, this added nearly an hour to our trip, and we found ourselves arriving in Tel Aviv much later than we wanted.
We made a stop at the Sarona Market for lunch- one of my favorite places in the city. As my friend described it when we entered, “This feels so much like New York it’s scary.” All I’ll say in response is, they don’t call Tel Aviv the Little Apple for nothing. Sarona has plenty of chain stores in a park-like setting, but the main hall is purely focused on food and built into a set of very modern glass high-rises. Walking through, you pass cheese shops, pastry bakeries, and plenty of miniature restaurants of all flavors. We chose a simple seafood restaurant, and enjoyed the people-watching before continuing to our hotels.
Due to the half-hour walking distance between our group’s hotels, it was nearly dinner time by the time we checked in and met up. So we headed to the hotel’s rooftop pool to get a view of the city, and at 7:00 when it closed down, we enjoyed the beach for an hour before deciding to find dinner. This particular birthday dinner consisted of a well-known Israeli burger chain called Agadir. The burgers are good, but I personally would recommend the drinks- and I’m not just saying that because I’m legal! Although I must say we saved the best for last- a beachfront bar (literally on the sand) to close out the night with some music, friends, and an amazing atmosphere.
Saturday was similarly lazy, with the majority of the day spent on the beach. The water may be warm, but thousands of people means the water isn’t exactly clean- you’d be surprised how much trash washes up on the shores of the Mediterranean. After each of us was sufficiently sunburned and had had enough of the warm water, sun, and frisbee, we packed up and headed to lunch at a small café on the way south to Yafo (Jaffa). Once there, we explored the oldest part of the city, walked through Yafo’s famed flea market- which, though the shops were closed, had plenty of restaurants open and packed- and visited the Smiling Whale statue which represents the story of Jonah and the Whale, thought to have taken place in this very city. We finished our day in one of the hilly parks near the sea’s edge in Yafo, where a band was preparing for a free concert. Unfortunately, due to our train back to Haifa, we could not stay for the performance. As soon as the busses began to run again, we caught one to the train station and headed home to Haifa.
Sunday, Onward gave us a day off from work, and we took the opportunity to explore more of Israel’s north. We hopped back on the train and headed right to the border with Lebanon to visit a small national park: the Rosh HaNikra Grottos. The park consists of 200+ meters of tunnels through grottos carved by the sea into the white-chalk cliffs. Access to the grottos is via the world’s shortest and steepest (60 degrees) cable car. While the walk through the grottos is no more than 30 minutes, the views are spectacular and well worth a visit.
Post-Grottos, we caught the train slightly south to the city of Akko. Nearly 50,000 people live in this mixed city- small by some standards, but outsized in its importance. The city is the holiest place for the Baha’i faith, and is home to a mixed and peaceful population of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Baha’i. The city is old even by Middle Eastern standards- records indicate it has been continuously inhabited for 4,000 years, since the Bronze Age. As we entered the Old City, we took the opportunity to beeline straight for a hummus shop for an incredible and mouth-watering lunch of hummus and meat, combined with onions, tomato, tahini, and multitudes of other fresh vegetables.
Akko is famous for its rare (in Israel) natural harbor, but also for its Templar history. The Old City is host to the Citadel, which was built during early Ottoman times on the foundations of the original Knights Hospitaller fortification and includes the Knights Halls and Underground Prisoner Museum.
Better known may be the Templar Tunnels, a 350-meter long relic of the late 1100s. The builders could never have known this, but after the end of the Templars, the tunnel would not be discovered until 1994. For the most part it is tall enough for someone my height to walk, though there were portions where even my much shorter friends had to duck their heads. Surprisingly, the site is accessible for those with physical disabilities, as there are small elevators build into the entrance. Unclear on if there was more than one tunnel (there turned out to be only one), we spent the next 45 minutes wandering the city’s streets and shuk, passing by the harbor on the way. There were many more places we did not have a chance to visit, and you could easily spend a day here exploring. But as the sun began to set and our feet began to beg for a break, we headed back to the train and returned to Haifa.
Jackson W Pincus 