So we had visited East Israel and we had visited West Israel. It was now time to branch out longitudinally and head North. We had booked a great-looking tour to cover Caesarea, Haifa, Rosh Hanikra and Acre (basically half the coast) all in one day. We had heard amazing things about all of these places. This was some serious tourism and after our incredible first two tours in Israel I was really excited.
After a night of birthday drinking the previous evening, waking up early was extra tough on this day. But waking up early and being tired and hung over would’ve been bad enough. Turns out our eccentric tour guide and his sidekick the “rude and moody even for an Israeli” driver decided to be fashionably late. So as we watched a group of about 20 tour buses leaving one by one, an hour later they still hadn’t turned up.
And in case tired, hungover and pissed off wasn’t enough, the absolute worst thing of all…by far…is that we didn’t manage to have breakfast because we didn’t want to be late for the bus. Now those of you who know me have inevitably at some point experienced me hangry and know what an unpleasant situation it is to find yourself in. None more so than my aunty Ceca, who’s eating habits can be sporadic at times. I have tried to explain to her multiple times if you feed me 3 times a day at regular intervals then no one gets hurt.
If you have seen me hangry you’re probably wondering what could be worse than a hangry Bosnian woman. Ever seen a hangry Italian? Well how about a hangry Bosnian and a hangry Italian being hangry together, waiting for a lazy Israëli who’s running over an hour late for a tour they woke up at 7am for, after a night of heavy drinking. Mic drop please. I rest my case.
The worst thing of all is that when our tour guide eventually did turn up, we began to wish he really hadn’t. I mean fair enough our expectations were high but he really was the worst tour guide I’ve ever had. Proof enough is the fact that when I started writing this blog I had to google the cities we went to that day because I couldn’t even remember them all.
Nothing to do with the beauty of the places, but more to do with the fact that the whole day was super rushed and our tour “guide” (and I use the term very loosely) legitimately didn’t know anything about anything. I mean the only place he guided us to was the restaurant and the souvenir shop where he spent way too much time trying to convince us to spend more money.
He was very eccentric, overweight and constantly sweating profusely and covering himself with water (it was really really hot). I was convinced he was an alcoholic and that stuff in the bottle he kept pouring over his face was some kind of odourless arak or local vodka or something. He didn’t spend a lot of time explaining anything about the places we were visiting, gave us a lot of time to “walk around” independently and he couldn’t answer any questions about Israel or the history of the cities we were visiting. On top of that, most of the time we were completely lost, as neither him nor the driver had any idea where the hell we were going.
If you’ve even seen an episode of the Apprentice where they have to create tours as their tasks and it all goes horribly wrong- trust me, this was worse.
The first place we visited was the ruins of Caesarea. This is a major port city built by Herod (everyone’s favourite “most hated Jew” from the previous blog). Of course it is named after the Roman emperor Caesar. Remember, Herod was a kiss-ass who desperately wanted to be loved by Romans.
This was another Roman style palace with all the things needed to enjoy a debaucherous life in the way only the Romans could. There was a beautiful amphitheatre, a hippodrome, some brothels and a Bath house. So in one night you could watch a comedy show, see some gladiators get eaten up by lions, enjoy some time with the lady of your choice and then clean yourself up afterwards. Sounds a lot more entertaining than my average Saturday night.
And watching people get eaten by lions was a favourite Roman pastime. Pretty much everyone who wasn’t a Roman citizen was thrown to the lions. Crowds would gather around the amphitheater much like a ‘Before Christ’ version of the weekend’s Strictly come dancing.
If you manage to beat an animal 6 times then you get your freedom which seems fair enough. They even had lady gladiators at the time for those ladies who would rather get ripped apart by a beast of the animal Kingdom, than work in the brothel and get ripped apart by a Roman. (Badum cha!)
Fast forward hundreds of years and in the 19th century the town was apparently settled by a small group of Bosniaks who were fleeing Bosnia. Bosnia had just been occupied by the Austria-Hungarians (1878) and these guys (Bosnian Muslims) didn’t want to live under Christian rule (remember Bosnia was under Ottoman rule before that). So they came to all over the Levant and in Caesarea they established a small Bosniak fishing village there.
This obviously made me immensely excited, but just before you start to wonder if I bumped into any “brother from another mother” back there, the village was eventually conquered and most of its inhabitants fled. There is probably quite a few people of Bosniak origin wondering around Israel somewhere, but I sadly did not meet any of them.
After Caesarea the rest of the day is really a blur. Next we visited Rosh Hanikra, the furthest north point of Israel’s Mediterranean Coastline bordering Lebanon. I remember wanting to pop over to Lebanon to get some good hummus (ooohhh buurrrrrrn), but that’s pretty much it. We did visit Accre and Haifa as well but by this point I had totally given up on the tour and dedicated my time to ripping the piss out of the tour guide accompanied by Steffi and some fellow Brits who also found the whole situation rather funny.
These places are all very beautiful by the way, but I recommend if you’d like to go you don’t book your tour with Tourist Israel and you make sure to have a hearty breakfast ahead of the trip.
