Midnight Travels: Day 11 – Arriving in Ein Hod

From Mt. Hermon which has a ski resort (one of only a few in the Middle East) we headed west on Highway 99 and stopped at a café on the Kibbutz Dafna where we enjoyed an assortment of salads, a fresh bakery, a local beer and cappuccino. We then backtracked to Highway 90 going south and cut over near the ancient town of Safed going west on Highway 85 to Roman seaport of Akko. Many of the Israeli highways have ongoing improvement projects which are clearly delineated from normal highway driving with orange painted lanes, a nice touch. I should also mention that stop lights flash green before changing to red and yellow before changing to green; also a nice touch.

Highway 4 runs North South near the coast and was relatively straight forward until we got to Haifa where I accidentally veered off the highway onto Haifa city streets. We of course got lost again and with the help of the GPS and Nick’s sense of direction we were able to get back on our route to the Artists Village south of Haifa called Ein Hod.

Carol had arranged for us to stay with a local stained glass artist Bob Nechin. Bob like several other artists in the village have rooms to rent and offer hands of classes in their craft. Our accommodations were a one room apartment below Bob’s studio and had a full kitchen. His wife Sue made sure we had everything we needed. After freshening up we headed into the village to meet up with Jake’s daughter Vik and son in law Hagai at the Ein Hod Café. Vik is completing her Masters in Art and Hagai is getting his degree in Photography. They live in Haifa and Hagai works at the Ein Hod Café. It was Indian food night at the café and while Hagai waited tables Vik, Nick and I and later two of Vik’s friends talked about life in Israel, travel, art and a host of other topics.