Caesarea, the Mediterranean Sea and Zircon Ya'akov

We drove to the Mediterranean today. It's my first time seeing it and I was a little excited. We accessed the Sea via a National Park - Caesarea. Caesarea was built by King Herod in about 25 to 13 BCE. Like so much of Israel, there's a long history here. This park was set up a little more like Disneyland than the other parks we've been to. There was an overly dramatized movie to watch, that showed the long history of Caesarea. There were shops. There was the beach, which was basically gross, but we could get a beer and hummus plate delivered to our umbrella (all overpriced, mind you). It weren't no Barbados.













One cool thing about Caesarea was the aqueduct. Herod built an elaborate and quite long aqueduct to bring fresh water to Caesarea and the above-ground portion is still visible here.

That evening we stayed in nearby Binyamina at a terrific bed and breakfast or tzimmer called Grushka B & B. Like most of our trip thus far, we found this sweet and clean place in the Lonely Planet guide. The AC worked great and we walked to our best falafel yet, though I could not tell you the name (see the photo).

Then in the early evening we went to Zircon Ya'akov to walk down the promenade. There were a lot of cute shops. There was a great paper artist there. Street musicians. And the best ice cream shop I've ever tasted...Aldo's Ice Cream. Though we heard that this was the place of early Zionists, we didn't get that feeling, probably because we weren't there long enough.