Haifa

My planned tour of Nablus was canceled because not enough people signed up. Apparently, although this country is chock full of tourists, they're mostly afraid of crossing over into the West Bank. Or not interested. Or both. When I told my taxi driver in Tel Aviv that I had gone to Ramallah, he asked, "Really? Weren't you afraid?" I pointed out that four people had been killed by a "terrorist" (unclear whether his motivations were politics or just general anger) just outside the Old City in West (i.e., Jewish) Jerusalem earlier in the week, while nobody had been killed in Ramallah, but he didn't have a reply.

Speaking of Ramallah, I quite liked it (see previous post for some photos). It was busier, and more urban, than I expected. Very lively, full of people shopping, working, celebrating Ramadan--in short, living quite normal lives in spite of the difficulty of living under military occupation. It felt more lively and more normal--whatever that means--than Jerusalem.

With more of the West Bank off the program, I decided to leave Jerusalem a day ahead of schedule, so came to Tel Aviv on Wednesday. That gave me time to go to Haifa Thursday.






As may be evident from the above photos, Haifa is built on a hill. A big hill. I took the Carmelit, Haifa's one-line "subway" up to the top.



And then walked back down, taking advantage of the many steps that had been considerately built into the hill.




Filipinos are everywhere: