While in Israel this past August, I ended up with an unusually small quantity of travel pictures to share. Between visits to relatives, the Bat Mitzvah ceremony (for which we hired a professional photographer), beach outings, and chilling in Tel Aviv, I only used my camera in a handful of places, three of which (Jerusalem, Bet Guvrin, Tzipori) deserved dedicated posts. The rest barely merits one other combined introspective.
That includes a guided tour of the Baha’i Gardens in Haifa. I lamented not being able to see much of the gardens from within when I was there in 2019, and this was a chance to rectify that omission. Here are a few perspectives from points that were not accessible to me the first time.
The guided tours are free of charge, run only once a day in a given language, and require pre-booking. While the guide did a pretty engaging job describing the history and the workings of the Baha’i faith, it is not something that you wouldn’t be able to find online on your own. In terms of access, yes, we descended the entire length of the central stairway from the shrine down – which is not allowed without a guide – but it hardly qualifies as being able to explore. And, of course, one-directionally touring something that is set on a steep hillside means that no matter where you park your car, you will have to find your way to the starting point which is significantly higher in elevation than the ending one… All in all, not necessarily worth the effort – limiting yourself to seeing the gardens from the accessible landings at different levels is what I will recommend going forward.
We also took a dip in the Dead Sea. Taking a brief departure from my usual MO, here is a picture of floating Natasha as evidence.
And a sunset picture of the view from the balcony of our rented apartment in Tel Aviv’s Florentin neighborhood.
We will proceed to the French Riviera from here. That second leg of the trip was richer in sightseeing and should offer more material for photographic essays.