Trip to Me'arat Keshet (Arch) & Akko City

This past weekend after having explored a bit of the desert prior weekend, Dima and I decided to move on to greener pastures. Which in Israel can only mean one thing - we went north.

It’s amazing how tiny this country is. We drove about 20 minutes out east and spent the rest of the way going north along the West Bank border. The separation barrier wall, the one that stirred up all that controversy in 2006 when it was started, ran along the highway we were on at some points, so I actually saw it, its sad that is has to be there. At one point the distance between the border and the coast is about a 10min car ride. Anyway that was a tangent, back to our trip.

The place we went to was right below the border with Lebanon, I would say we were 5 minutes away from Lebanon. Too bad we could not go there, would be cool to check out Beirut. The entire trip from Tel Aviv took us about 1.5 hours.

So Me'arat Keshet is an old cave that has caved in (for a lack of a better word :), up in the mountains. Its very scenic and a great hiking area. Side-note the entire area looked a lot like Milos, a Greek island we went to last summer/fall. We climbed around there for a while and then drove a little southward to a city called Akko.

It’s a very old city that has been continuously populated since 16 BC, can you believe that?? It’s over 3600 years old. The old city that still stands there now was built by the crusaders and others (at least that is what I understood). It seems the crusaders were responsible for the tunnels and a citadel (which was used by the British mandate as a prison). From my understanding some of the construction there dates back to 12th century. Its fascinating to see people still living there.

Well that’s that for the trip. We are now itching closer to finishing up project "Make this place a home". You know a lot of it is just cleaning up, furnishing, fully unpacking everything and stocking up on food.

Here is a link to the Facebook album from this trip:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=160117&id=661621936&l=8e34da512f