Sunday, June 1, 2008

Frolicking in Gardens...or not

Last week in Israel, I needed to see everything I hadn't yet. This being impossible, we chose to go to Haifa, Israel one of the days, to visit the Baha'i Gardens. This is a very interesting religion, who claim to believe in all religions. Which in reality means they believe in all of the different prophets of the religions. The have a shrine/temple in Haifa with gardens that encompass an entire hillside, with over 200 gardeners to keep it beautiful.

We got off the bus at the bottom of the hill:We were only able to climb to the first gate before we had to come back down. All after my friend had to layer on her sweats, because her tank top and shorts were to scandalous for a holy place. We were hoping to be able to climb the steps all the way up, but instead we had to take a bus to the top to another viewpoint.
This was torturous. We could look down at the gardens, but were not allowed to go in them. The guards smiled at us as they unlocked the gate for select other people. Denied. All I wanted to do was to skip around and frolic in the gardens.

We walked down the hill (along a side road) to the middle, shrine level, and came across a sculpture garden. We actually were able to play around and pose with the sculptures here.
The Gardens were built like the Champs de Elysses in Paris, so when you looked down, the main street leads to the Mediterranean Sea. We could easily walk there! So we did - but not so easily. The street lead to the Port. It was another hour or more walk to the beach. We finally got to a somewhat secluded beach and we passed out on the sand. Best nap ever - minus a little sunburn.

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