November 26th, 2019
Today began with another pancake breakfast at the hostel before heading out to the Bahai Gardens with two girls from Germany and one guy from Switzerland. Haifa is home to the World Center for the Bahai religion and has a huge temple with 18 tiered gardens on Mount Carmel. I first learned of the Bahai religion in India when we visited the Lotus temple. We took a subway and went all the way to the top of Carmel Mountain to start the tour of the gardens. We had beautiful views of Haifa, the gardens, and the coast. The tour was nice and every inch of the gardens were perfectly manicured.
After the tour we walked to the Wadi Nisnas area of town. It is an Arab neighborhood with markets and shops. I had planned to go to the beach afterward, but ran out of time as I was meeting someone to take a bus back to Jerusalem.
My Mom has a long string of connections through her church to a couple about my age who lives in Jerusalem. The guy studies in Haifa so it worked out perfectly for me to catch the bus with him to Jerusalem. My Mom was really excited for me to meet her friends, and I had dinner at their house. It was very good. They made a local soup dish with dumplings called Kubbeh. They had a great apartment and it was really nice meeting them and visiting.
I stayed at a hostel close by and mapped out some of the things I wanted to do tomorrow as Jerusalem has so much to see. When Brendan was there, we saw just a few things so I was happy for the opportunity to spend more time here taking it all in.