Sailing today


It's 8am and I am just about to go down to the docks to find my ship. I decided to travel up to Haifa yesterday rather than stay in Jaffa and rush everything this morning, and that gave me the chance to wander round the city a little. Besides, my dorm in Jaffa was like an oven. I ended up sleeping on the roof.

After Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Haifa is pretty low key but it is pleasant enough. It has a German Colony, just like Jerusalem, and there is an enormous Bahai shrine and some gardens leading down to the city centre. You can visit the gardens but only as part of a tour so I went to down to have one last afternoon on an Israeli beach instead.


Thursday afternoon is the busiest time of the weeks to travel as all the soldiers leave their barracks to go home for the weekend. So the train that runs down the coast here (and eventually on to Tel Aviv) was full of those uniformed kids with guns that has become such a normal sight here. It will be strange to get to a country where carrying a semi-automatic weapon in the street is not something most people do.

Last night four of us from the hostel here went out for a final-night beer or two in a bar that had a great Jewish/Arab mix - the first time I had really seen that working in Israel and a very good farewell to a country whose joys and challenges I've been very privileged to share very slightly in this summer. It has been an eye-opening experience and I'll miss Israel's unique brand of craziness.

But in the meantime, I've got my bag, my book and some sea sick tablets (just in case - I don't think these ships have stabilisers) and it's time for me to, er, embark. I'm guessing there won't be internet or mobile reception at sea, so see you in three days and Athens, here we come.