Akko and Rosh Hanikra

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Akko and Rosh Hanikra

I awake at 5:20 AM and am excited for today’s trip to Akko and Rosh Hanikra. I booked the tour online on Sunday afternoon and received a “reservation” email. I assume that all is well and squared away and make my way downstairs. The United Tours bus is supposed to pick me up outside the Prima Royal hotel at 6 AM. I grab some fresh grapes from the fridge for breakfast and am dressed and ready to go at five to 6.

The bus does not come at 6 AM nor at 6:05 or 6:10. At 6:20 there is still no bus. I walk inside the hotel and ask them for some help. The very nice concierge dials the number for me and hands me the phone. The conversation goes as such:

Me: “Shalom. I booked a tour through you guys on Sunday for today to Akko and Rosh Hanikra from Jerusalem.”

Israeli Man on Phone: “Did you receive a confirmation email?”

Me: “I think so. I have it here in front of me” (reading the information contained within said email)

Israeli Man: “No. No. No. That is a “reservation email.’ I asked if you had gotten a confirmation email. I do not see you in our computer. Maybe our internet was down and it did not register with us.”

Me: What? @#$%^&* #$%^&* $%^&* !!!!

IMOP: Well, I am sorry sir but you could go on our Friday tour and we will give you a ten percent discount.

Me: So basically you’re offering me the $100 tour for $90 on a day I won’t be able to travel. Thanks but no thanks.

Frustrated I decide that I will do the tour on my own and never book an organized tour again. I grab my things and head to the Jerusalem bus station. After some asking around, I hop the 8:30 bus to Haifa and promptly fall asleep. At 10:15, I switch buses at Haifa to Akko. On the bus ride, I finally crack the clue to the NY Times Magazine crossword puzzle I have been working on since June 27 and most of the anger I’ve been feeling subsides.

By 11:15, I arrive in Akko and walk from the bus station through the new city and into the old city. Akko is mostly Arab and it definitely has a different vibe than the rest of the places I’ve visited. I start by the 12th century sea walls that the Crusaders built. From there I head to the Museum of Underground Prisoners which is the old citadel where the British kept all the Jewish prisoners (many of whom later became famous Israeli leaders and politicians) during the Resistance Movement for statehood.

Afterwards I debate doing the underground Crusader’s City but it is a long tour and I will have to come back. Instead I duck in and out of some shops and meet a very nice British woman in Kivunim. The entire store is art and other things made by individuals or groups with disabilities and some of the profits go to these groups. I buy a sign from a group home of deaf adults that is in both Hebrew and sign language. http://kvn.org.il/heb/ShopForMeaning

I talk with the manager Caroline for a while as she is from Leeds (UK) and I have been there a handful of times. Caroline gives me some good advice on where to go while I’m in Akko for a few more hours and where to go for lunch. I head into the shuk which is filled with lots of spices and fish. I buy some sweet paprika and some almonds and then head to Hummus Sayid for lunch.

Hummus Sayid has a long line out front and I have now been told by three people to eat here while I am in Akko. I wait for about 15 minutes until I am seated at a table with two middle aged Israeli men. There is no menu and the waiter brings a bowl of huge onion pieces and olives. My new Israeli eating partners are Shachar and Amnon. They are air conditioning repairmen and take their hummus very seriously. Between my broken Hebrew and their broken English we manage to piece together some semblance of a conversation between the enormous bites they take of the onions eating them as if they were apples!

The waiter brings us a bowl of hummus each and some pita. The hummus is quite yummy and the men tell me that it is the best in all of Israel. Although I agree that it is quite good I am pretty sure I’ve had better.

I am a polite hummus eater and tear a small piece of pita off and dip it into a small chunk of hummus before consuming it. However Shachar and Amnon will have none of that. They ferociously devour the hummus shredding huge pieces of pita and adding globs of parsley oil and pine nuts to their hummus while holding the bowl under their faces just in case any excess falls off back into the bowl.

My new friends finish within three minutes and even though I am still eating order tea for the whole table. The tea is sweet yet piping hot and I sip slowly careful not to burn my tongue. Shachar and Amnon gulp their hot tea as if they were shotgunning a can of Red Bull. We pay the check and party ways but I can’t help but feel that my manliness has been shattered in pieces.

After lunch I take one last walk back through the shuk and then grab a taxi to the train station. I take the the train from Akko to Naharriya and then grab a taxi to Rosh Hanikra (the next bus wasn’t for an hour). I ask the taxi driver to please drop me off at the grottoes and cable cars in Rosh Hanikira. When we pull up I am a bit underwhelmed with the scenery and ask the cab driver “Are you sure this is the place with the cable cars?” “Yah. Yah. Cable cars right there” “Ok. Well I’m going to go check with those two men over there just to be sure. Can you wait for a minute? “Ken. Ken. (Yes) 50 shekels.” I pay the cab driver step out of the cab and poof – he drives away. (Sigh). I make my way over to the two Israeli men sitting on a rock outside a bunch of houses. “Is this where the cable cars are?” It turns out that I am not anywhere near the cable cars and the taxi has dropped me off at Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra not the cliffs by the borders where the grottos are. However Joseph – an extremely nice Israeli offers to give me a ride from the Kibbutz to the border. I am eternally grateful and offer him a place to stay anytime he decides to make aliyah to New York. ☺

Rosh Hanikra is beautiful and the water in the grottos is sky blue. I meet some kids from London, watch the information movie in Spanish (then again in English), and watch the workers there prepare for a wedding that will be happening there later that night (cool!).

Finally, at 6 o’clock. I am ready to go. Train from R.H. back to Naharriya. Train from Naharriya to Tel Aviv. On the train the woman across from me takes out a piece of paper and writes: “Our future is bright…” I ask her if she is preparing her wedding vows but it turns out that she is a nursery school teacher at an English and Hebrew speaking school. So, I help her compose an end of the year poem in English for her students. Tel Aviv sherut back to Jerusalem. It has been an adventurous, tiresome, and eventful day. I walk in the door completely exhausted at 9:30 and collapse on my bed in my clothes. Almost simultaneously - the wooden slats give out and the bed collapses beneath me.