Day 9 - going Roman
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2008
1
9
15
Trip End
Apr 05, 2008
Caesarea,
Caesarea,
Israel
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thankfully all heads cleared overnight so we were ready to hit the sites again. Today's destination was Caesarea, once most important port for the Romans. There's a beautiful and still active amphitheatre overlooking the Sea (although in my opinion not quite as awe-inspiring as the cliff-top Minnack Theatre in Cornwall). Then there's a horse and cart race track - Ben Hur styley. Old palace ruins (Herod again..). Beautifully mosaic-ed bath house and lots of arch structures formerly housing waterfront taverns and the like. Very atmospheric, that includes the visitors: you'd have a Canadian tour group singing hymns on the steps of the theatre whilst on stage a bunch of Israeli kids dressed as Romans are enacting an impromptu rendition of whatever they envision as being a classical play - which is, in essence, running around and hollering in a rather internationally and pan-historically valid version of "childhood".
It was interesting to glimpse what I would title "historical recycling". The Romans long gone things were getting a bit dilapidated, but the natural harbour was still a prime landing spot, so the crusaders came, tore the place to shreds and used the rubble to build their fortifications. You can see marble pillars once transported in from Italy for the glory of Gods and rulers simply poking out of the masonry as mere support structures for the thick walls. The Ottomans then gave the place a face-lift and turned the crusader church into a mosque. That's history for you: It's alive, it's great and it persistently destroys and reassembles itself.
A little down the coast are the remnants of an old Roman aqueduct (thank God for spell checkers, would you have got this one right in a spelling bee?). Large bits of it have crumbled or been reclaimed by sand dunes. But this section just stands majestically astride a beach. Here we went for our first dip in the Mediterranean. Cold, but certainly refreshing.
Now it was time for Hanna's Magic Sabbath Feast Mark II. Just as we'd finished digesting last nights delicacies. We were joined by Hanna's son and his girlfriend in yet another meal for kings. Afterwards we want for a calorie burning perambulation through the town's main street and watched a belly-dance puppeteer. Can't describe it, check out the picture and wobble your head side to side and rhythmically scrunch up your eyes to watch the puppet's belly contort while in your head whining in falsetto voice something along the lyrical lines of "Shikirim - ahaha!". Know what I mean? No I haven't had anything to drink, that's how it's done.
