SATURDAY (SHABBAT) IN HAIFA, NOVEMBER 11TH-THE BAHA'I TEMPLE CHALLENGE

I got up early to figure out how I was going to see the Baha'i Temple and Gardens on foot.  No buses to the top are running on Shabbat so I set out on foot at 9am.  Directly across from my hotel I found the French Consulate.  I had a map but immediately went the wrong way on the street of my hotel.  I walked about a quarter of a mile before getting directions that headed me back past the gate at the bottom of the Baha'i Gardens.   On the way I saw a group of young people and I asked them directions.

  They were volunteers on a kibbutz and they were from all over the world with an organization called Kibbutz Program Center.  They were as lost as I was.  We chatted about Israel for a few minutes and said goodbye (I forgot to get a picture and I saw them again on the way down and got this picture).  I got directions at the Baha'i Gardens gate on how to walk up to the Temple.  It was an indirect route through the streets and included a lot of stairs, just not the fancy stairs through the gardens. 

At the foot of the stairs I met a young (meaning around 30) Swiss woman who was also walking up to the Temple.

  I was shocked to see that she didn't ascend the stairs any faster than I did.  I was also shocked that my right knee didn't cause me any pain.  I atribute that to the fact that it was early in the day and not to any training effect of my volunteer service.  We walked a few blocks from the top of the stairs and we were at the level of the Temple which I had, so far, only looked up to.  We went through the ever present metal detector and security check and we entered the Gardens and walked toward the Temple itself.  The temple and the grounds are incredibly beautiful and the view down the stairs toward the Mediterranean Sea is amazing.  

We went through the secondary security check and after removing our shoes and being sternly warned to be silent and not take pictures, we were

allowed to enter the sanctuary.  We were in the sanctuary with about 6 other people and it felt very relaxing . When we emerged from the sanctuary we were pleasantly surprised to see that we had beaten the crowds by minutes.  There were hundreds of tourist from India waiting in a long line to visit the sanctuary.                                                                              

There isn't a stone out of place in the gardens and the beauty is dazzling.

After seeing all the tourists at the Temple level, we found the exit and walked to the upper gardens via the streets.  The upper garden gate is where the tours begin.  There were a lot of tour buses arriving at the upper gate so we got in line for the Hebrew language tour.  The tours are limited to a group of 135 people and one guide.  These tours involve having the tourists walk down the garden stairs to the Temple level.  It's a 45 minute tour and if you take the tour in a language you are fluent in you will get more out of it than I and my limited Hebrew skills.  When we arrived at the Temple level we left the grounds and walked down to the main entrance via the city streets and stairs.  It was easier walking down these stairs than walking up, but it still wasn't fun.

We walked down Ben Gurion street toward the port area.  Hillary (my Swiss walking companion) wanted to go to the beach because they don't have them in Switzerland and I was on a quest for lunch which I found at a shopping mall in the form of a tuna melt sandwich and my favorite beverage which can only be made better by the addition of rum and a squeeze of lime.                              

I returned to my hotel room around 3pm and wrote and napped until 6 when I decided I was more tired than hungry so I stayed in and eventually ate the half of giant cheeseburger I had in the fridge in my room.  Regrettably I didn't have a cold draft beer to go with it.  

After dining i wrote a bit and went to sleep thinking about tomorrow's day trip to Acre, or is it Acco.  I do hope they're the same place....