Day One

Welcome to my Journal from our Israel trip, I hope that you enjoy tagging along. Please feel free to leave comments and ask as many questions as you like. The contents you will be reading are insights and discussions had between myself and other people on the tour and of course largely information obtained from our wonderful guide Aaron. I have broken this blog up into separate days for easy of posting, reading and editing. I encourage you to sign up to the blog to stay up to speed. To those fellow travellers of mine who expected to see this sooner, I truly apologize, but would like to point out good things take time and great things a lot of time. There are several pictures videos and links and lots to explore. Have fun!

Our first day was spent on the plane going to Tel Aviv and was arranged by our very informative travel agent from International Heritage Tours. The flight was 12 hours long and the time difference between Canada and Israel was 7 hours. May 14th the day we left was Israel's actual Independence Day, which I found to be quite ironic and quirky. We landed safely in Tel Aviv around the noon hour local time on Sunday May 15th, 2011.

Sunday was meant to be a light day. We were introduced to our temporary guide Duran and our driver Nissan and then we were off to Caesarea. The distance from the airport was not that great, but we were all tired of sitting so we were eager to get off the bus. In Caesarea we were greeted by our first historical site, which held the remains of a stadium where games and horse races where held. Both the Amphitheater and Palace, which were found close to the seaside, were assumed to be one of Herod's strong holds. The artificial bay, which was created here; but showed little remains, was created using the first forms of concrete using layers of sand and volcanic ash to create pilings and walls.

As a side note both the touch and smell of the vegetation, and ocean is all lending to the transportation back into biblical times. Our guide Duran did a fantastic job of filling in the picture where the ruins left off.  

On our way to our first hotel, the Leonardo in Haifa we also stopped by shortly to see the Roman Aqueduct, which was built to bring water into the Caesarea strong hold which we just visited. Later we would learn just how important water was to the strategic building of fortresses. With the eye you cannot tell that the duct is actually sloping gradually (20 cm per 100 km) and that the water traveled solely by gravity. This was considered to be an engineering feat of great achievement. Our guide also made a point that while the Roman soldiers were great at fighting, they didn't do it all the time and that during their off times, they were used as and engineering and construction crew.

After a few photo opportunities, we were given the afternoon off to settle into our first hotel and get some rest. Wake up call for the morning had been scheduled at 6:30 am and loading time for the bus was to be 7:30 bags and all. Our next stop was to be Mount Carmel.

We were sad that we only had one night in this seaside hotel; it was the best in the trip and had a great view. Check out the nighttime photos and video.