A three day visit to Israel, March 2013

As part of our trip to Jordan, we returned to the Haifa/Akka area where we served at the Bahá’í World Centre for 5 years from 2006 to 2011. It really was returning home, as you always take a part of a special place where you lived with you when you leave, and leave something behind. 

We had one particularly clear day where we could see across the bay of Haifa to the plains of Akka (believe me, this is a very clear day in Haifa)

 and further to the snow covered peaks of Mount Hermon on the border with Lebanon.

 Thankfully, there had been a lot of winter rain and snow in this part of the world, and the peaks, dimly shown above, were the most snow covered we had ever seen.
  
We visited the old city of Akka and saw the familiar stalls and shops.

 These sail boats had a great view of the walls of this ancient city.

We saw so many friends we had previously served with, 

 as well as some new ones, like Shana (daughter of Christine Krug) and her husband; 

 and the brother of Romina – a sweet lass from Argentina who came to serve at the same time as us.

 We spent some time in the Wadi (Christian Arab market place in downtown Haifa) and Talpiot fruit and vege market – places we had frequented on a weekly basis.

This is the bakery where we used to get donuts for just 2-3 weeks each year - during Hanuka. Sweet memories.

We had some time to play tourist as well. The old Roman aqueduct at Caesarea.

was a site I had not visited during our previous stay,

 and it was good to see that so much of it is still in good condition after more than 2000 years.

But the highlight of our short stay was to revisit some of the Bahá’í Holy places.

 Such a wonderful blessing to be able to visit.

We have many posts of trips we made around Israel - see the 2006 to 2010 blog posts for details.