Caesaria and Tel Aviv

Cassie here, The next morning we had a late checkout, which meant  that for the first time in nine days, we could take our sweet time to get ready for our day. Then we schlepped ourselves out of the room just before breakfast ended. We had excellent Turkish coffee, bread and jam, a salad, and an omelet. I don't eat tomatoes or eggs, so the salad and omelet were out of the picture for me. So I pretty much just ate bread and drank the turkish coffee. 

After breakfast we got our luggage together and drove to the Bahai Gardens a few minutes away from where we were staying. The Bahai Gardens were so exquisite! As we were walking up the marble staircase, we noticed every charming detail of the beautiful landscape in the middle of Haifa.

Inside the Bahai Gardens 

 



Then we headed off to Ceasaria, which is a beautiful ancient seaport that was rebuilt in the 1930's as a tourist attraction. We spent a fair amount of driving time from Haifa to Ceasaria right along the Mediterranean Sea. On our way, we made a quick off road stop to the beach. The sand felt like hot plates even with shoes, so we spent the next 400-ish yards doing a weird dance of trying to step on the ground as little and as fast as possible, and yelling HOT every second until we got to the water. I thought it was kind of hilarious.
The sand was a beautiful caramel color, and even though the water was warm, it was a relief on our burning feet. The sea was had a clear aquamarine, turquoise ombre look to it. No picture could do it's beauty justice... But we took pictures anyway. 

After about 20 minutes on the beach, We drove a little more, then we found Ceasaria. The ruins on and off land dated back about 2,000 years.

We watched a film about the history of Ceasaria, then we walked around the ruins, then we ate some passion fruit ice cream and pizza before we hit the road for Tel-Aviv. After of course getting lost, we arrived in Tel-Aviv, a large city along the Mediterranean sea. It reminded us of LA with the board walks, the interesting performers, and the 20,000 people on the boardwalk and beach!

It was getting late so, after getting lost for an unusually short amount of time, we headed back to Jerusalem and made a side stop to the town of Abu Gosh ten minutes outside of Jerusalem for some felafel's with hummus that Martha Stewart was talking about. It was definitely the best hummus we have ever had! 

Since it was still Shabbat, the streets in Jerusalem were completely empty. We saw no cars and very few people, so we had a blast zooming through the empty streets going to Uncle Chuck and Aunt Leslie's house. We were kind of exhausted, so we told them about our adventures, then went to sleep.