Thursday, December 20, 2018

Israel: 12/17/2018: Ceasarea


The hotel WiFi doesn’t seem to work to send emails, but if I set up a hotspot from my phone, the emails on my iPad send ok.

Rose & I set off for Caesaria today, about 45 min north along the coastal highway. I think I said I’m not a great navigator, sometimes getting Rose onto a left turn lane one turn too early.  

The Ralli museums at Caesaria were interesting — by a prosperous Sephardi Jew — one was part Latin Am painters, with a Magritte lithograph exhibit thrown in and some Salvador Dali upstairs.  The second picture below is a Salvador Dali Elephant



And some archaeol from Caesaria.  The second was in honor of Sephardic Jews — lesser paintings on biblical themes, with a big statuary courtyard.  The museums were the result of some kind of family feud about money.

We went to the Caesaria ruins themselves after lunch, left a bit before 4.  Did you know that the French king Louis IX built part of the walls of the crusader castle with his own hands??  

Rose wanted to shop at a grocery store for gifts to take home, so we found one.  Then, we had trouble finding our way back to the main highway.  (It was dark by then).  

Twice, we were directed by Google Maps to a circle where the only choice that fit the directions was an “Agricultural path”.  (We had to return the car before the rental place closed at 6, and it was after 5).  Rose discerned a sign in Hebrew that alleged the “Agricultural Path” went to Tel Aviv, through the fields (b’sadot).  OK, so she turned onto the track across the fields.  It took us to near the highway barrier, but then all we could do was turn in the opposite direction from the instructions.  It took us around the back of a gas station, and there was an entrance to the highway from the gas station.  So Rose hurried down the highway, with me directing as best I could from my phone (which wasn’t very well).  And Google Maps wasn’t great — the voice couldn’t pronounce the Hebrew names, and at one point it told us to do a U turn in the middle of the divided highway (we didn’t; it straightened itself out). We got to the Hertz rental shop with maybe 9 min to spare.

Whew.

We scurried back to the hotel, I drank 2 glasses of wine at the free happy hour and Rose drank 1.  The man at the next table, who seemed lonely, was a mechanical engineer from somewhere in the US heartland,  traveling in the Holy Land & deciding whether to convert to Judaism — his wife of 20 years was threatening to divorce him if he did.  He was headed to Hebron next; Rose admonished him to be careful.  A roommate of AL’s from Dartmouth came to meet us for dinner — we went to a Dhosa place nearish to the hotel.

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