We were so tired after our long day in Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, but because we wanted to fit as much as humanly possible into our time in Israel, we got ourselves up early again and met up with Daniel. Our first stop was the Ba’Hai Gardens in Haifa. A big part of the Ba’Hai religion is meditation, and they believe it is easier to meditate without any distractions, like irregularities in the environment which could draw your attention away from your center. So, these gardens are meticulously maintained…each blade of grass is the same length, everything is absolutely symmetrical.
From here, we drove about 45 minutes to the ancient Roman city of Zippori. This is where we all got very Indiana Jones. Daniel first took us to walk through a giant cistern outside of the ruins.
After we reached the end and climbed out, we actually went down into the tunnels where the water would run from the cistern into the aqueducts. We literally had to climb on our hands and knees and use our cellphones as flashlights.
Because the crusaders needed help from others to overthrow Acco, each ally in the war demanded part of the city and its port as payment. When Acco was finally captured, part of the city belonged to the crusaders, part to the Pisans, part to the Venetians, part to the Templars, and part to the Genoans. And afterwards, these groups were always fighting. One solution was to dig tunnels from one groups’ area in the city to their part of the port so they didn’t have to pay any tariffs to the others, or really to have any contact with them at all. This is the Knights of Templar tunnel.
