Crusader city and car troubles.
Trip Start
Apr 01, 2011
1
19
38
Trip End
May 27, 2011
We left reasonably early this morning after another interesting sleep. The Israeli young people that were staying at the Hostel were really noisy and woke us up in the early hours of the morning. We headed to Acco - on the coast. We went to old city here which also has quite a bit still standing. We looked at the crusader's part of this city, there architecture consists of lots of arches, and although quite grand after awhile this gets a bit boring, all the rooms start to look the same. We did go through the old sewer tunnels which they also used to escape through in times of war. We then went into the museum, which was not really a museum but a fairly boring art gallery. Afterwards we tried to find Templar's tunnel and spent a lot of time wandering around the streets, we did find a good stall that sold sweets, including the great nougat they sell here. We bought a few different types to try. Then we finally found the entrance to the tunnel, and although it was interesting it was just a tunnel. It did take us to near the sea at Acco, and that was a pretty place. Rhiannon and Jenny had a ride on a horse that some boy was leading around, and then after taking photos from the old wall we went to find lunch. We found a falafel and swaarma shop - where I had my first falafel in 20 odd years. It was really nice, and some of the others had falafels too, others opted for the swaarmas which have meat. After Acco we were driving to Mt Carmel - but unfortunately the car we were driving was having trouble with it's brakes, and Caleb was not happy about taking it up some of the steep mountains we still needed to climb. We decided that safety was the most important factor, and then proceeded to waste a bit of time, swapping over cars. You think you have the car pretty clean until you find out just how much you have to shift from one car to another. The others had gone to a nearby shopping mall - once we had finalised the car, we decided to stay put, as the shopping mall was absolutely packed. Eventually we caught up with the others, we decided we would drive up Mt Carmel, but unfortunately we again experienced the odd things a GPS does, and ended up in several different places none of which was Mt Carmel. We did eventually find Muraka which leads to Mt Carmel - the monastery was closed unfortunately - so you could not see the sculptures of Elijah and the prophets of Baal or the other friezes. We did get the good views looking down Mount Carmel, and some jewish family wanted us to take a photo of all their family there - they were the first jewish family that had really spoken to us on this trip. We then decided to go back up the mountain for a look at the village, Alvin & Cindy bought a couple of druize bags, and we bought a Samantha some wineglasses for her birthday. Food was very expensive here - they are asking about $8 for a plate of french fries - which is way too expensive when you are feeding 12 people. After driving home everyone was tired, and the boys ended up going out to get tea - they bought McDonald's which turned out to be more expensive than the food up the mountains, but we were all ready to eat anything at this stage.
