Haifa

Today, my aunt and I drove to Haifa which is 25min from her house. Haifa is an underrated city in Israel, the third largest in population. It's a port city along the Med Sea, AND a city that climbs up the Carmel Mountains. I can't think of many cities that are both by the sea and mountainous. Our first stop in Haifa was the Baha'i Gardens all the way at the top of the city mount. The Baha'i Gardens were not only extravagantly beautiful, but also a great place to see the entire city from above, as well as the city of Akko further down the coast another 25 min. I learned a lot about the Baha'i faith today during our descent through the gardens. Baha'i's are really an amazing group of people. They believe that all of the major figures in each major religion descended from the same God, or Universe, or whatever you want to call it. They focus more on practicing pacifism, acceptance, love, truth, and unity. The gardens are their holy site and pilgrimage. They must ascend the 19 terraces, which is their holy number. There's a shrine of the Ba'b, which is beautiful and houses the remains of the founder of the faith, as well as a Greco-Roman looking building that houses the original archives of the founding of the faith. The gardens are completely symmetrical and maintained perfectly all the time. Baha'i's are actually not allowed to have a community in the State of Israel because 1) It is a place where they should go for their pilgrimage and 2) they have seen the violence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Israel and do not want that to happen to their people. So they reside in communities all over the globe, but not in Israel. In many ways I really connected with the ideas and values of the faith. It was a really exciting, jaw-dropping experience.

After the gardens, we walked around the city to find some shwarma. We took some directions from a guy, but they didn't take us to a shwarma restaurant. Instead, we ended up in a cute, artsy, Arab neighborhood called Wadi Nisnas. The neighborhood has lot's of outdoor art on the buildings, streets, etc. It was fun that we ended up there, but we were still starving. Finally we got our shwarma and it was awesome and super yummy.

Our last stop was the Haifa Museum of Art. There were a lot of pieces of art in the museum that I really appreciated such as the sculptures, mixed media, and various installations. However there was also some "modern" art that were ridiculously simple and meaningless, and I would never have thought it would be displayed in a museum. I have great appreciation for all kinds of art, intricate designs as well as simple forms. But some of the pieces in the museum were, in a way, diminishing the quality of the other pieces of art. Overall, I was glad to have went. I bought a cool hologram-type postcard at the end.

Haifa is a really steep city, so you either need a car or rely on public transportation. The bottom part of the city around the port is pretty flat, but the rest of the city is quite a hike. I found out that there have also been some health issues for many individuals living in the city because of the amount of industry and pollution from the port. Great city overall and I would definitely return to explore more.