Caesarea Maritima

From our previous visit to Haifa, I knew the train station was walking distance to where Insignia would be docked today. Not that we were taking a train. Rather, I knew the path to get us out of the port on foot was in that direction. Instructions from port security — and an escort by Javier, Insignia’s Chief Purser, when we ran into him along the way — made getting to the port entrance easy peasy.

Short of taking a tour, renting a car was the easiest way to get ourselves to Caesarea National Park, about 40 km from the port. Luckily, Suncar (on Jaffa Street) was just a 15-minute walk from the port. Soon, we were breezing down Hwy 4 to Hwy 2 to Rte 6511.

The park has a beautiful setting on the Mediterranean coast, between the Crocodile and Hadera rivers. I’m not going to go through the entire history of the area … anyone interested can look that up. Suffice to say that Phoenicians were living here as far back as 586-332 BCE. Other empires and kingdoms took over in the years that followed … and then the Romans came in 30 BCE. They awarded the land to King Herod, who built a large port city and named it Caesarea in honor of Octavian Augustus Caesar … Herod’s way of saving his neck from the chopping block.

We entered the ruins of Caesarea through the perimeter fortifications and slowly made our way to the harbor area and the Visitor Center, which was open today. The museum inside is small, but the short film gave us a brief glimpse of how Herod built the city. Then, we wandered out towards the harbor, following a meandering course that took us through the ruins of the palace, vaults, public latrines and baths; along the length of the hippodrome where chariot races were held; and on to the Herodian Amphitheater.

We enjoyed our visit to Caesarea National Park … except for being disappointed in the amphitheater, which has been restored with modern materials and now sports a performance stage that doesn’t fit the ambiance one bit. The Mediterranean served as a beautiful background for the ruins, the brilliant sun and blue sky adding to our pleasure in the day.

All in all, an enjoyable day that more than made up for yesterday’s frustrations in Ashdod.Read more