We made it safely and soundly (we’re super glad that we didn’t have to deal with a time change) to rainy Israel. My parents warned us, correctly as it turns out, about the wet winters here, but rain sure is preferable to German ice and dirty snow right now. Whatever the weather, there are Roman ruins in these parts, so Death’s Head especially is pretty happy. My only complaint is that we can’t hire a history professor to explain everything to us. Curse my ignorance!
After waiting out the rain this morning, we popped out for some errands with my mom, along with a quick stop at the Haifa beach.
We basked in the beach goodness (it’s a dream of ours to live near a sea, any sea, someday), and then Mom drove us forty minutes south to to the ruins of Caesarea. It’s an ancient city, built by Herod’s cronies back in 22 B.C. I’m no historian, but [Annoyingly Obvious Observation Alert!] that seems like a long time ago. We’re suckers for history, and DH is particularly a sucker for Roman history and ruins. These ones were quite impressive.
This picture is called, simply, “Cat in Sarcophagus”:
Caesarea went through occupations by many different empires until it was finally abandoned for 600 years, during which time it became hidden due to shifting sand and other science-y things that are way over my head. In the latter part of the 20th century, farmers who came to till the land began to discover the ruins.
Today I gained great respect for Herod’s taste in cities and in tile-work. The Romans were pretty good tilers.
I also gather that the Romans were kind of into pillars. Caesarea has a lot of them, which is nice, but they are a bit useless in terms of protection from rain. From what I can gather, the Romans were not so much into ceilings, because Caesarea is completely bereft of them. Strange.
My favorite part of our tour was the Herodian Amphitheatre, also referred to as the hippodrome. This is where chariot races and various other sporting events were held. Up to 10,000 people could sit and watch the games/executions/debaucheries. What fun!?
Here, DH recreates history by pretending to watch a violent chariot race crash:
Caesarea is also home to another Roman stadium. Amphitheatres seem to have been pretty hip back in 22 B.C.:
The weather changed at least six different times as we wandered around the ruins, but we only got rained on for about twenty minutes out of three hours. We count that as a victory.
In closing, here are a few more pictures illustrating just how great ruined cities can be:
You should totally visit Caesarea, you guys. I think you would like it.
For us, the next stop is a hike up to Masada (the site that birthed an important Jewish legend), a float in the Dead Sea, and then a day or two in Petra, Jordan. We may be out of internet commission for a few days, but you can count on me to post an obscene amount of pictures when I get back online. I’m so good to you.
P.S. If you like looking through hundreds of pictures of Roman ruins, along with pictures of explanatory plaques, you should totally click here and look at all the pictures we took today.
