About a half hour north of Tel Aviv is the really old city of Caesarea. If you're following along with a GPS, it may also be spelled Kasarya or Quesarea or Quisaria or ... you get the point. I think there are so many spellings because so many people lived here over the years, Jews and Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders and Sultans. It got knocked down a few times and rebuilt a few times, but after a few earthquakes, people finally gave it up and it was buried. They did some major archaeological work digging it up and restored a lot of the ruins. Any way, 2,000 years ago King Herod decided he needed a good port in the region. They built a breakwater that went out almost a half-mile with dock space, warehouses and rooms for sailors on it. The building techniques were pretty cool too: sunk caissons, filled them with volcanic ash (which hardened like concrete), and built footings and piers on top. Not bad for back then. Herod put up a Roman temple (he got to be King by kissing a lot of Roman butt; Caesarea was also named after the emperor - Augustus, not Julius, of course) which later was built over with a Byzantine church, a Crusader church and then a mosque. It was a pretty big town for a while and they needed more water, so the Romans built some huge aqueducts running from way out in the country. They don't connect to the city any more, but we drove over and saw them (like a half mile away). You can climb on them and see how they were made and stuff (very, very straight and level - good construction). And there's a beach there - no need to let good sand go to waste for a 2,000 year old aqueduct.
In Caesarea we took a break for lunch at a cafe. We hadn't gotten to go to any real restaurants in Tel Aviv (on account of you-know-who), so this was our first more authentic humus and pita, mid-eastern fare. I love this kind of food and stuffed myself. I needed the energy for all that walking around, right? Oh - BTW - Paris was not diet friendly, did I mention?
We played around Caesarea for a while and then hopped back in the car for Haifa. We got in a little late, so we went straight to the top of the mountain that looks over everything (Mt Carmel or one next to Mt Carmel, don't remember, but Carmel is where the Carmelite nuns are from). From there you can look down on the Baha'i gardens and shrine. They are really, really beautiful, but you'll have to go online to search for a pic - mine are worthless because they have the shrine covered for renovations. Trust me, it's nice. We also looked over Haifa a bit (huge port; nuclear power plant; Burj-esque building) and headed out.
Since we were a little behind schedule, we pushed Nazareth off for a couple days and went straight to Tiberius and the Sea of Galilee. We got in just after sunset, checked in and had a glass of wine. The late lunch in Caesarea held us over, so we went to bed early to get up and see the sights around Galilee in the morning.
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