Israel! Ancient Akko & Uri Buri for an AMAZING gourmet lunch!

After our three fab resort days in Eilat, we fortified ourselves at the truly amazing breakfast buffet (literally 101 dishes including Insalata Caprese, + a chef making smoked salmon roulades!) at the Leonardo Plaza Eilat, drove back to Beersheva, and caught the Israel Railways train north- all the way north, to Nahariyya! When I last took the train in Israel (ca. 1986, when I was serving in the Israeli Army) there was still only the Haifa-Tel Aviv-Jerusalem route, and it was so poky and slow that the running joke was that you could hop off, pick flowers, and hop back on! But it was free if you were a soldier in uniform, and so I took it- but only when I didn’t need to be anywhere in a hurry! Now there’s a fabulous network of ultra-modern trains with world-class commuter stations all over Israel! And it takes only 3 1/4 hours to go all the way from Beersheva in the Negev to Nahariyya just south of the Golan Heights! Railfans that we are, taking the train across Israel was something we Had to do!

We picked up our rental car in Nahariyya and drove to Akko, also known as Acre, a beautiful, historic city of ancient stone walls on the Mediterranean, home of the famous Crusader fortress, halls built by the Knights Templar, Jewish synagogues, Christian churches, and fascinating underground tunnels- and one of many UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Israel. Dan and I had a delicious, simple kebab lunch at the Ptolemy Restaurant (the garlic-cilantro-olive oil tapenade was SO good!), sitting outside in the sunshine at the fishing port, and I had a wonderful “deja vu all over again” moment, having eaten there, just like this, back in the mid-1970s, when I was a kibbutz volunteer on holiday, backpacking around Israel!

Wandering around Akko, which is a delightful “walking city”, we got to see the huge mosque built by Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzer “The Butcher”, have a Turkish coffee in a nearby cafe, and then meander thru the nearby art galleries. We took the excellent self-guided audio tour thru the subterranean Crusader fortress, walking down through the many different levels, where you can see how the Turks built literally on top of the old city, and through the Crypt and Knights’ Halls, which the Hospitallers, the Order of the Knights of St. John, used as a fortress more than 700 years ago. (Do take the audio tour- otherwise, as with many historic sites, you’re just looking at an “old pile of rocks”!) We saw the Clock Tower, and stopped for fresh squeezed pomegranate juice in one of the inner courtyards; we took the fascinating A/V tour of the Turkish “hammam” baths, too!

Fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice!

Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzer (“The Butcher”) Mosque

Turkish coffee break!

Crusader Fortress, Akko



In the subterranean Crusader Fortress, Akko




Modern Art & Ancient Stones…



The Turkish “Hamam” Baths



Dan in the Turkish Bath!



Underground in the Crusader Fortress, Akko

Akko at Twilight…

Clock Tower, Akko

   

Modern waterworks in the Ancient Templar Tunnel!

Akko’s Orange Man!

A fabulous sculpture house on the sea…

Akko is truly ancient: it’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, dating back to the time of Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III (1504-1450 BCE). A part of the Kingdom of Israel, Akko was incorporated into the empire of Alexander the Great after his conquest in 332 B.C.E. The city was subsequently seized by the Egyptian king Ptolemy II, who renamed the city Ptolemais in the 2nd century B.C.E., which it remained until the Muslim conquest in 7th century CE, when its ancient name was restored. The Crusader’s conquest in 1104 resulted in it being renamed St. Jean d’Acre. In 1291, the Mamluks invaded and destroyed the city, killing every remaining Crusader and putting an end to the Latin Kingdom, and Akko ceased to be a major city for almost 500 years. When the Bedouin sheik Daher el-Omar carved a small fiefdom out of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-18th century, he made Akko his capital and built a large fortress, which was subsequently fortified by the Turkish governor, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzer, “The Butcher”, 1775-1804. The mosque al-Jazzer built is one of the most distinctive buildings in the old city.Napoleon tried to take Akko in 1799, but was unable to, his Middle Eastern campaign collapsed, and he returned to France, frankly, with his tail between his legs. Akko then fell under Ottoman control until the Turks were defeated in 1918 by the British, at which point it became part of the British Mandate for Palestine. The British used the ancient fortress, which had never been breached, as a high-security prison to hold and execute members of the various Jewish underground groups fighting for the creation of the State of Israel. On May 4, 1947, members of the Irgun (of which Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin was a member) staged a dramatic rescue; this was later dramatized in the film “Exodus”. Though few Jews escaped, the audacity of the raid was a serious blow to British prestige and a tremendous boost for the morale of the Jews. Today, the fort is the site of the Underground Prisoners Memorial Museum, which depicts the history of Akko and the prison. You can go into the death cell where the condemned Jews were kept and see the gallows, where a noose still hangs above an open trap door.

I am transported to “foodie heaven” just Thinking about that lunch! Before we left, we bought Uri’s cookbook and he signed it to Chef Dan!