Part 2 - Day 2

We woke up pretty late to catch up on all the sleep we missed the night before. After stalling around the house for most of the morning, Sage, Jen, Seth, Jason, and I hopped on a bus to Haifa. By pure luck, some Israeli guy got us on the right bus and to the exact stop we needed for our hostel. It would have taken a LOT longer if he hadn't showed up. We settled into our rooms and got suggestions from the front dest for what to do with our day. We took the subway up the mountain and walked down around the Bahai'i gardens (we couldn't go in because we happened to come on 1 out of their 4 holy days of the year... which really sucked). After walking down the mountain, we explored the German colony and found a great Persian restaurant for dinner. We got about 6 huge plates of food for the five of us, and it only cost about 10 bucks each. It was the best we'd eaten since we left the states... yet another benefit to traveling without the group!

After dinner, we met up with my friend Merav and her boyfriend, who I knew from high school, but who lives near Haifa. We planned to take a walk down the promenade by the beach before going out for the night, and Merav's boyfriend was going to drive us down there. After we dropped off the girls, he and I went back to the German colony to pick up Jason and Seth. Right in the middle of the road before we got back to pick them up, his gears ground down and the clutch burned out. I had to push his car into a parking lot because he was blocking traffic and the cops were freaking out at us (and he didn't have insurance). So the girls took a taxi back and the guys walked down to the parking lot, and we had our own party there.. Not what we had planned, but definitely a unique experience.

A tow truck picked them up and we went back to the hostel for the night. Our room mates were a bunch of Bahai'i kids from British Columbia, Canada and a Christian from Bristol, England. We swapped some stories and went to sleep.

My time is almost up on the hostel computer here, so I'll add more another time.