Monday, July 14, 2008, Sefad

More pictures. Today the plan was to leave at 7:15 (taking account the opening time of the Central coffee boutique), go to Sefad via coastal route past Acco and then take smaller route to Sefad, go down to Tiberias, swim, go to Ceasaria, and back. First and last pics are insurance policy in case car rental places gets funny on us.

The plan worked as advertised. The roads are much better than we thought - even smaller roads are excellent and we only ran into serious traffic when passing Haifa. In retrospect it would be OK to take smaller roads close to the center of the country - they are more scenic and are not less safe. Coastal route is not that scenic because the road is close to the coast only in a few areas. The road signs are in 3 languages. Drivers are better than those in Sicily and are overall reasonable. Access into/out of the city is not bad either.

We arrived to Sefad around 10. It was supposed to be this mystical town on top of the mountain where Kabbalah originated and artists took over. The mountain views when approaching are indeed awesome. The town has excellent system of roads leading to the top mystical center and good parking. The town has grown to lower sections of the mountain and is occupied by Orthodox Jews or Hasids (not sure in what proportion) for the most part.

The presense of religious ones did not allow to relax to feel the mystique completely. It is also true that the overall the spirit of the place is changing and it would be a better place to visit in a few years. The original art colony was established when the State of Israel was founded. Now most of the artists are retired or dead. New artists (many from the former USSR) are moving in and lots of renovations are under way. If not for that, the sounds of drilling unfailingly reduce spirituality of any place.

There are several interesting places like the home and museum of Fenkel (I am sure I am misspelling the name) who established the colony and art center. Despite my complete art ignorance it was clear the he had amazing talent and paintings depicting his father's agony, biblical topics, and his family life are deeply touching and different. His wife, Inga, who survived him lives in home - she must have been a good deal younger than him. She told me that one day he will be recognized to be the same magnitude as Van Gogh and we will be happy to have visited his gallery. She lives there surrounded by the pictures on her life with him.

Another gallery on the same street (forgot the name) is in a beautiful house, the paintings are so so, but it has been made look very bohemian including a massive bed in the living room. The views like the city through the hole in the wall must have been very inspiring.

These was a sign for Sefad cheese and we faithfully followed it through the maze of streets, passing several American orthrodox mommies with kids. We arrived to the right place where they gave out free tastings. The cheese is great, but, if you walk out with it, in this weather it would probably go bad instantly.

There is so much art that it is difficult to find anything to want to take home as a memory. The place is open between 10:30 and 12:30. At 1, we realized that stores are closing and tour buses are gone, and left too.

We drove down the mountain and towards the lake looking for the beach. We entered a few places designated as beaches but none of them allowed swimming. Finally we arrived to Tiberias. The city looks even more down than Tel Aviv - most of the luxury hotels around seem empty. There was no beach access from the main promenade either. And so we left too.

The last stop was Ceasaria. We went to the beautiful excavated complex on the sea. Entrance fee is $6 per person and implied access to all sites and the beach. We wanted to go swimming and noticed a beautiful beach inside the complex - there were umbrellas and benches and armchairs with pillows. Turns out the entrance was another $6. They really should have charged $12 to start with.

We spent about 3 hours there and had made it to the wild beach. There are restaurants, galleries, and of course excellent ruins. On the beach a bunch of people was searching through the shells. I've asked one lady what she was searching for and she said she and her mom are looking for the piece of old mosaics that sometimes get washed up here. They make more mosaics out of it. The rest of the people are searching for crowd sake. I felt a strong urge to search for something too and found a few pretty rocks with holes.

One other feedback is that they should clean the beach more than once per season.

We got back, left the car near the car rental agency, and walked around and to the Tel Aviv port in the evening.

In a falafel place one religious Israeli (RIA) tried to squeeze to the cashier in front of us as we mistakenly tried to order from the falafel maker guy. He saw that we were talking to the wrong guy and made his move. Dan tapped him on the shoulder and said that we were there first. What a louse that RIA was.