All I can say so far is that Israel is amazing. An ancient land and a modern country at once, it is strikingly beautiful at every turn. I arrived yesterday morning and spent the day eating delicious food and relaxing at Jack’s house with him and his family. Today was our first outing… we went first to the marina in a place called Herzelia Pituah, which is a wealthy neighbourhood right next to Tel Aviv. We strolled around and had ice coffee to cool us off, since it was a humid 32 degrees or so. Later, we drove to Caesarea, an ancient Roman city that has been amazingly well maintained. For 500 years Caesarea was the Roman Empire’s capital city in the region and it has its share of sordid history, including the death of many Jews. It was also the home of Pontious Pilate during Jesus’ life and St. Paul spent two years imprisoned here. Now Caesarea is popular tourist destination in a country filled with history and archaeological sites.

We walked through the ruins, with the exception of the amphitheatre, which we couldn’t see because there was an event going on. At dusk we had a fantastic (and enormous) dinner at one of the many ocean-side restaurants. Tomorrow we are going to Haifa, Akko and Zichron Yaakov…




The beach





Caesarea









Look what we ate! We had about 15 'salads' which included hummus, Israeli salad and lots of vegetables with different herbs, oils and spices. We also had chicken and goat kabobs cooked on a charcoal grill. Every bit of it was fantastic.




View from our table
... and some mint tea to finish...