Day 13, Thursday, March 15, 2018 - Tel Aviv and Jaffa

A relaxing start to the morning - we didn't leave the hotel until 9am.

Our first and main stop was the old city of Jaffa that has been used as a port since Roman times. It is a shallow port so it is only used by small fishing boats. Cruise ships can only dock at Haifa and two other deep water ports.

We passed a 13th century BC Egyptian arch with clear Egyptian hieroglyphics (actually a reproduction - the original is in an Egyptian museum). It is amazing that the Egyptian culture was so far from where we think of the center in Egypt.

We visited the house of Simon the Tanner where St. Peter brought Tabitha back to life  as recorded in the New Testament book of Acts. There were lots of steps up and down narrow alleyways in the old city.

From there we went to the Sarona district of Tel Aviv which is the site of the Christian German Templar settlement in the 1860s. They brought modern farming and industrial technology to Israel and were quite successful until the British forced them at the beginning of WWII to leave and shipped them all to Australia. The abandoned buildings were used by British military and subsequently by the Israeli military. The 19th century buildings have been saved, surrounded by a sea of tall glass, steel and concrete buildings. We had lunch at Molly Bloom's Irish Pub.

The bus brought us back to the hotel for a free afternoon. We walked down to the shore where I took a quick dip in the Mediterranean Sea. The water is quite shallow and swimming is prohibited.

We are returning to Newark tomorrow morning.


View of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean from Java


Simon the Tanner's house in Jaffa

Israeli Arab students celebrating the end of term - maybe prom

Swimming in the Mediterranean



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