A few words now and then on here hardly do this experience justice but I think I have managed to mention a few factoids, kind of enough to build a bit of a picture of just how significant this place has been historically.

From Jesus's tomb at Easter, to the scenes of the battles for Herod's kingdom at Masada, the contested Old City with its religeous holy sites 'The Dome of the Rock' and 'Wailing Wall' and living across the road from a crusader Monestry from the fifth century, you can't help but absorb a bit of history here. A recent trip for the 'Shavuot' agricultural holiday to a Kibbutz in the North offered up another history lesson. Visiting the old city area of Acco, I learnt the coastal fortress was the scene of a battle with Napoleon and was one of the few areas he was unsuccessful in conquering. It's an interesting site, with the ruins in good condition and offering more religious sites, a hanging area at the entrance to the city and numerous cannons stationed on the cities walls. An open air market operates on Shabbat, run by Arabs (particularly Druze, I'll get into that at somestage) and offering a rare glimpse of seafood other than fish, taboo across the faiths over here.

We also passed Haifa on the trip and dropped into the famed Bahai Gardens. Very impressive with not a blade of grass out of place. The gardens are designed to incorperate holy numbers in the Bahai faith with 9 terraces and 1 structure, the symetry is also significant but I don't know the detail well enough to go into it with any confidence.

From here it was off to Maor's Kibbutz (I hesitate to put names in here but she is a champion who has loaned me camping gear and transport at everychance, so she needs a mention). The shavout holiday is an Agricultural holiday and thus celebrating it at a Kibbutz (communal agricultural settlements traditionally) is regarded as something special and it was indeed great fun. There were parades, choreographed cherry picker dances and in a modern twist, the kibbutz's micro brewery was offering up a good range of beer.

By this stage it was officially Shabbat 'the Sabbath' and everything was shutting down including transport so we (an English scholar and I) had organised to sleep out in the north on a trekking route that incorperates 'Montfort Castle' another crusader relic relatively in tact and standing isolated among mountainous forest is impressive to sit and appreciate the acheivement of its existence. *The fortress is built on a narrow and steep cliff above the southern bank of Nahal Kziv in the Upper Galilee region, about 13 km northeast of the city of Nahariya. Unlike many other crusader fortresses in the Holy Land, this fortress had not been originally built for military purposes but begun its way as an agricultural farm, prior to its becoming one of the finest examples of fortified building architecture in Outremer (pulled strait from wikipedia). It was a good treck, greener than you could imagine with ferns and moss creating a tropical feel along a crystal clear creek teeming with fish.

The rest of the trip went of without a hitch, so much so that I went and did a similar version with a hire car this week. But more on that, Jimmy Hendrix, beautiful women, and Brazillian liqour next time.. Lehitra'ot