Akko

After a wonderful night's sleep at our new friends' house in Manot, we woke to another gourmet Israeli breakfast laid out for us on the table (we decided if their current careers in engineering and community planning don't work out, Daniel should become a tour guide and Maytal should open a bed and breakfast). We then visited one of the coolest sites we've been to - less than a half mile from their house! A few years ago

, they were building a new sewer line for the village of Manot when they happened to discover a huge cave - the entrance to which had collapsed some 15,000 years ago, which is significant because it means it has been undisturbed since then. It's the biggest cave in the Middle East, and they have found a skull, several human teeth, animal boes (from hunting),  and simple tools which indicate that the cave was inhabited and that date back as far as 250,000 years ago. It is expected that this cave will be an extremely important one in helping understand the earliest humans and possibly their ancestors. In addition, the cave is geologically interesting and beautiful with many huge stalagmites and stalactites and a steady water supply. This morning, there was a team or faculty and students from Ohio (Case Western and Akron) working on the site! The site coordinator gave us a tour and took us down into the cave and then we chatted with our fellow Ohioans a bit. This cave, virtually unknown by tourists, was a real highlight.

We then said goodbye to our new friends, with promises to see each other again someday, and we drove the short distance to Akko. It's funny for us, who are used to getting into the car at home for a drive to a new place (e.g., NY or VA) and driving for 8 - 10 hours. Here, we load up all of our stuff (not easy to fit everything into the trunk!) and set out, only to arrive at our new destination (completely different from the one before) 20 minutes later :)

We stopped in the Youth Hostel where we would be staying to drop off our stuff (too early to check in) and explored the tourist attractions of Akko. There is a lot of really cool stuff to see in Akko, that is completely different from what we have mostly seen before. The majority of the sites here are Crusader and Turkish, so fairly recent by Israel's standards. Unfortunately, unlike most of the sites we have visited in Israel, which tend to have great education and explanation to go along with them, we felt this was somewhat lacking here (maybe it would be better to see Akko with a guide?). We went to tourist office and they told us about a combination ticket for several of the site that sounded good. You had to go to another office to purchase it and yet another office to pick up your audio guide that came with the ticket (first thing I would change if I were in charge of tourism in Akko - put it all in one office). The first thing on the ticket was the crusader (Hospitalier) Fortress. This huge crusader fortress was filled with dirt by Al-Jazzar, the Ottoman ruler of Akko (more on him later) in the 1700's so that he could build on top of it. This had the unintended positive effect of preserving it for us to appreciate today. Unfortunately, the audio guide that accompanied the tour was incredibly boring (and I usually like even the most boring of audio guides!) so it was hard to be inspired by the site. We left, under-whelmed.

The next thing on the combined ticket was the Okashi museum of modern art. I'm pretty sure they put it on the combined ticket, because otherwise, no one would go to it ever. It was a so-so, one big room, modern art museum.

Next on the ticket, the al Basha Turkish Bath. This had potential. It was also built in the late 1700s by Al Jazzar and operated until 1948. They had a multimedia movie, of the type which we've seen several in Israel and have usually been very impressed. This one however, told the grizzly story of Al Jazzar (e.g., how he heard that one of his 36 wives had been unfaithful, but he didn't know which one, so he killed them all, just to be sure. While the story of this ruler of Akko s interesting history, the "wink-wink, isn't it funny how awful he was?" style in which the stories were told, made us somewhat uncomfortable. It's hard to tell if it's because the population of Akko is mostly Muslim that glorifying this leader is considered more acceptable...

Next stop, Templar tunnel. This one was pretty cool. Opened about 20 years ago when a complaint about a blocked sewer pipe led its discovery (all of the cool stuff is discovered thanks to sewer pipes, it seems!) this was a tunnel that the Crusaders used to go from their fortress to the port without having to pass through the town. The tunnel had fairly uninformative videos along the length of it, but it's always fun to walk through a tunnel.

By this point, we were pretty hungry, so we stopped at a Greek owned seafood restaurant on the coast (Abu Christo), and enjoyed grilled chicken, tuna, salads, etc with a great view. We walked over to the Marina after lunch and hopped on a short boat ride out into the Mediterranean (the guy said he was leaving right away, and then we waited about 10 minutes until a kid on bicycle got back with his cigarettes). We rode out with Arab Idol music playing loudly in the background (as Ella said, " there was a few seconds between songs where it was really peaceful and nice out there"), but it was fun to see Akko from the sea as people arriving to this port have seen it for thousands of years.

There was one more museum on our ticket (an Ethnographic museum), but we arrived too late to see it. We did however, get to climb up and walk along the walls, which was cool, and read a little about how Al Jazzar stopped Napoleon from conquering Akko (and thus probably a good part of the Middle East).
Finally, we came back to the excellent hostel and checked in (we're very impressed with the hostels here in Israel. All clean, modern, comfortable, really nice simple places to stay). We took showers and changed (it's amazing how hot and sweaty you can get in a day of touring around here) and listened to the muslim call to prayer from the Al Jazzar mosque just outside our window, then headed into the "New City" for dinner. We found a pizza place and enjoyed sitting outside eating pizza and drinking beer (only the grownups) and planning our adventures for tomorrow.