Haifa!

Last Thursday (which is like Friday in the US because the weekends here are Friday and Saturday) my roommates and I took the day off and went on a day trip to Haifa! It's about a 30 minute walk to the train station in Lod (the city next to Ramla and the closest train station to us), and then an hour and a half train ride to Haifa from Lod. We woke up super early, because we needed to leave the house by 7:30am in order to catch the train. We also packed a bunch of very yummy snacks to eat for breakfast on the train. We were joking at one point about how Israelis always want to know where we are from, but when we tell them they've never heard of the place, so we end up just saying we're from "near New York." Which has varying levels of truth to it for each of us. One of our seatmates overheard this, but didn't overhear the part about how we weren't really from New York and spent quite some time talking to me about how much she loved New York and hoped to be able to live there someday.

The scenery on the first part of the train ride was rather unexciting, as we were traveling through Tel Aviv and its suburbs, but as we neared Haifa the views from the train became gorgeous! There are a couple of pictures up on my flickr, although they don't do the Mediterranean justice.

The two big things on our agendas for the day were riding on the smallest subway system in the world (and also the only subway in Israel) and seeing the Bahai Gardens. Lucky for us, we could take the subway right to the gardens. Haifa is built on a hill, and the subway basically takes you up or down the hill. It only covers a couple of blocks, so very few people actually ride it. There are only two trains running on the track, with two cars each, and we had a car to ourselves for most of the ride. We actually rode the entire system three times- we had the time, and it was fun! Because Haifa is on a hill, the subway has a very steep incline and is a little bit like a roller coaster. Riding the subway was definitely the highlight of the trip for me.

The Bahai Gardens were a bit of a disappointment, as I had thought that they were going to be some of the most beautiful plants I had ever seen. Instead, the gardens were kept so perfect that they looked almost fake. The gardens also mimicked each other and there wasn't much variety. The tour guide seemed pretty bored with her job, however I did learn an interesting fact- none of the Bahai sacred scripts are translated into Hebrew, despite being translated into hundreds of other languages, and having Bahai holy spaces in Israel. This is because Israel has anti-missionary activity laws. There is also no permanent Bahai population in Israel- the Bahais who live here are only here for five years (there is also no permanent Bahai population in the Vatican City.)

After the Bahai Gardens we walked around Haifa, and eventually ended up at the shuk and got falafel. After several failed attempts to get to the beach (it apparently isn't accessible from the part of Haifa that we were in) and some more seeing of Haifa's gorgeous views, we decided we were done for the day and board the train back to Lod. We all passed out and woke up just as we were arriving in the first of the Tel Aviv stations, and discovered that the train was packed with soldiers (a common occurrence in Israel, but I'm still getting used to it.) After waiting for far too long to switch trains in Tel Aviv and then finally arriving in Lod, we were happy to be home.