I was intrigued about spending one day in Haifa, a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, mainly because Israel is a country I’d never visited. Prior to 2019, I’d only heard or read about Israel, either in the bible or on the news. (And to be frank, the news that’s come on over from Israel in recent times makes visiting the country kind of off-putting.) So when we docked in Haifa for a day, there was no way I was going to miss out on an opportunity to explore.
Whilst not as big (or well-known) as Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, it was still awesome to spend one day in Haifa and see a tiny slice of life here. We explored the city on foot, with a sprinkling of public transport thrown in for luck, and managed to see a fair bit of this part European, part Middle Eastern feeling urban sprawl.
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The Conundrum of the Israeli Passport Stamp
Haifa Port is busy with all kinds of traffic, and the docks are laden down with shipping containers from cargo ships and cranes to load them on and off. We were the only cruise ship docking that day. Passengers shuffled towards passport control in a very beige building dotted with gun-wielding soldiers. I always find it a strange kind of a welcome, being greeted by men with actual weapons, but this is the world we live in I suppose. What can you do?
Now to the question of passport stamps in Israel.
Israel is one of those countries which divides people drastically. Both literally and figuratively. Until a few years ago, having an Israeli stamp in your passport could therefore lead a traveller into a few problems further down the line, particularly when it came to visiting other countries- namely that certain other countries would simply deny you entry.
Realising that this was a problem, these days in place of a passport stamp, visitors to Israel are handed an entry slip at the border, which you must hold on to for the duration of your stay in the country. (Citizens of the UK, USA and the majority of the EU qualify for visa-free travel to Israel, so there will also be no visa added to your passport.)
Blue slips of paper in hand, it was time to head on out to Haifa. Seize the day! Exploration time!
It’s very common in cruise terminals for a helpful huddle of tourist operators to hand out maps and leaflets to arrivals, and this was no different in Haifa’s cruise port. They had however, run out of maps in every language except Russian, so we took the Russian Cyrillic map of the city with gratitude and went on our merry way, tailed by one of the ship’s doctors- who none of us had ever met before but toddled along with us, silently, all the same.
The world’s smallest subway line
Much of the city of Haifa is built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, a big old mountain range stretching out along the coast, which means two things: firstly, that there are some truly awesome views to be found here, and secondly that there are some steep roads to walk in order to reach them.
Alternatively, you could just get the funicular, which is what we chose to do. We piled into a carriage at the bottom of the tracks, tailed of course by the doctor; who also had a Russian map and studied it very closely but upside down.
The only underground railway in the whole of Israel, the Carmelit (as it is beautifully named), is also the smallest subway line in the entire world. There are a mere six stations on this line which runs back and forth for just over a mile up and down the mountain all day long. I appreciated the retro design of the whole place; it all felt very Wes Anderson inside the stations, complete with old-school looking advertising on the tiled walls.
The Carmelit runs from 6am-midnight Sunday to Thursday, 6am-3pm on Fridays, and from Motzei Shabbat- midnight on Saturdays. (Motzei Shabbat is the time immediately after Shabbat- the Sabbath or day of rest- which takes place from Friday evening until Saturday evening, when three stars become visible in the sky.)
A single ticket to ride the Carmelit costs 6.60 shekels (approx €1.86), and a day ticket costs 10.60 shekels (around €2.99). Buy your tickets from the machine in the stations.
Only one day in Haifa? Shawarma is vital
By the time we reached the top of the funicular’s tracks, I for one was on the brink of starvation. We collectively decided that it would hardly be worth eating in Israel if we didn’t eat something Israeli, so scouted the roadside cafes and restaurants on the busy road we were wandering along. At one point the doctor stopped to admire a window full of mannequins dressed in cheap women’s dresses, and began to stroke the pane of glass with curious delight, and it was at that point that our hunger overtook our politeness and we declared we were speeding up our search for food. The doctor nodded solemnly and continued to stroke the shop window; that was the last time we laid eyes on him until we got back to the ship, but I’m sure he had a great day anyway.
We settled on a place with a little line of locals out the door, having been led there by the smell of shawarma which was wafting out of the door with them. And let me assure you, this was not like the greasy kebab shop offerings you get after a night out in England, oh no.
Shawarma is cooked in the same way as Turkish doner- stacks of meat compressed together and roasted slowly on a rotating spit- but what made it truly delicious for me was the array of pickles and sauces that we could add to our meals. I’ve never seen so many brightly coloured condiments before, and the whole shebang was absolutely delicious. So many vegetables and hummus and tropical hued mouthwatering sauces. (If you get a chance to try amba, do it. Pickled mangos and chillis. Good.) And with a tray of freshly-made falafel on the side, you just can’t go wrong.
Haifa’s most well-known spectacle: the Bahá’í Terraces
Israel is of course a predominantly Jewish country. Adverts and street signs are written in Hebrew, and synagogues were the only religious buildings I spotted as we roamed the quiet city streets.
So it struck me as a bit bizarre that probably the most well-known landmark in Haifa belongs to a completely different religion all together- and a religion which I had literally never heard of before in my entire life. But especially with only one day in Haifa, this landmark is considered a must-visit. We followed the signs to the Bahá’í Terraces, until we reached the big gates at the entrance.
The Bahá’í faith has only existed since the 19th century, and in brief it teaches its followers that all religions are equal, and that nationalism and racism are downright awful ideologies. (To be fair, this sounds like a religion I can get on board with.) And the gardens in Haifa are one of the most sacred places to Bahá’í followers, due to the Shrine of the Báb (that’s the guy who founded the religion). This domed building contains the remains of the Báb, and thousands of pilgrims come to pay their respects every year.
The gardens themselves are a luscious green gem in the otherwise fairly muted landscape of Haifa, and standing at the top with a clear view of the gardens stretching down the sloped side of Mount Carmel is pretty spectacular. In the distance we could see the rest of the city all the way to the shipping containers and cranes of the port, and our little ship smiling to herself.
(I’m not being poetic when I say she was smiling; there’s a literal smiling face painted on the bow.)
Visitors are only allowed to enter the Bahá’í Gardens as part of a tour, which happens in English at midday every day and always begins at the main gate at the top of the gardens. (There are also tours in Hebrew and Russian.) There’s no charge, and you don’t need to pre-book.
However, we didn’t realise this and turned up just a tad too late. You snooze, you lose, pals.
The hippest place in Haifa: Masada Street
Admitting defeat but not giving up on having a great day in Haifa, we headed back downhill on foot, down staircases and past blocks of flats smattered with the odd abandoned lot overgrown with weeds and discarded concrete breeze blocks. The neighbourhood we were walking through was residential, and we only saw a handful of people wandering around; mums with babies in prams or students with bags of text books over a shoulder.
There were plenty of cats though. On pretty much every street in Haifa, there is a whole collection of regal-looking felines slinking through fences or soaking in the sun. They have the same look about them as the street-cats of Cyprus, with a few more torn ears or scarred faces. A bit more urban, you know?
Eventually we reached Masada Street, a quiet road lined with coffee shops and bars, and splashed with colourful street art. On the pavement, chairs and tables were nestled outside bars where hipster-sorts and students were gathered together drinking either coffee or beer and smoking either tobacco cigarettes or weed.
We chose a table outside the U-Bahn Cafe, which seemed apt considering we work on a German ship and ‘U-Bahn’ is very much a German thing. The only places I’ve ever ridden the U-Bahn is in Hamburg and Berlin, so I was mildly confused about why there was a whole cafe named after it in Israel. More on that later though, pals.
The drinks were good, the cafe was cool, and the temperature in Israel in October was downright lovely. Ready to restart our walking tour of the city, we carried on down the mountainside towards Downtown Haifa.
The German Colony
As the afternoon wore on we wandered along past market streets where stalls were selling the very last of their fresh fruit and vegetables, and old men sat in clusters chatting and smoking in the sun. The light was turning from the bright white of day to golden hour as we made it to the German Colony.
The area centres around a wide street which seems almost as if it’s a direct continuation of the Bahá’í Gardens; the straight line of the road runs to the base of Mount Carmel and miraculously blends into the green steps of the terraces, leading to the golden dome of the temple in the distance.
The German Colony in Haifa has been around a while. Colonists arrived in 1868, when Israel didn’t even exist yet- this was Palestine, and the country was under Ottoman rule. And the colonists were a particularly religious kind of people- these were Templers, a Protestant sect who chose to settle here because, as the official Holy Land, the Templers believed that their appearance might help to bring about the second coming of Christ. As far as we know, Christ the Second never turned up, but what the colonists did manage was to bring wealth and businesses and tourism to an otherwise fairly poor neighbourhood.
When I’d heard we were heading towards the German Colony, I expected to find a cobblestone lane of half-beamed houses straight out of Saxony or Bavaria, but this actually isn’t the case. I’ll be honest- I was a little bit underwhelmed. The only way to really tell the buildings apart from the other buildings in Israel is that the roofs are pointed rather than flat or domed. And that’s about it.
The German Colony is however, considered to be the centre of Haifa’s nightlife, so maybe had I visited in the evening I would have been a bit more impressed. Soz German Colony- another time.
Baklava-lava. Sorry pals, I can’t help it.
With the shadows getting longer and the light even more dazzlingly golden, we made our way back to the port and an evening at work. Luckily though, we still had time to stop in to a shop containing more trays of baklava than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I’d estimate at least 10,000 syrup-soaked sticky pastries under that roof, surely.
Abd El-Hadi Sweets is in an Arab neighbourhood called Wadi Nisnas, and the whole place smells like syrup and pistachios and warm pastry. Which makes sense, because that’s basically what it sells. We chose a few each and took them away to eat straight out of the bag.
A meeting with the Broken Fingaz Crew
Back at the port, we stopped to take a closer look at a gigantic mural on the wall of a building. Most of Haifa appears very dusty and concrete, so these bright pieces of street art that decorate parts of the city are- I think- a really awesome idea.
The reason there’s so much street art to be found in Haifa is largely down to the Broken Fingaz Crew: three artists who launched the Walls Festival in the city, where artists were invited to create work across the streets of Downtown Haifa.
The mural by the port, called ‘Railways,’ is by Broken Fingaz Crew themselves, and at first glance looks like an elaborate retro advertisement for what is actually a fictional railway company- Fingaz Railways- featuring a shady looking blue man in a fez. Although Fingaz Railways isn’t a real thing, when Palestine was under Ottoman rule, there was a railway here which was built partly to make the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca easier. Haifa, Amman, Damascus and Beirut were all on the Hejaz Line; the mural contains writing in English, Hebrew and Arabic because of this.
It’s a beaut way to tell the story of the city, which has a much richer past than first meets the eye.
With the setting of the sun as we strolled back up the gangway, our one day in Haifa was up. But I definitely feel like we saw a lot. Days later, after sailing through the Suez Canal, we would dock in Jordan and see one of the old Hejaz Railway locomotives, bizarrely sitting alone in the terracotta sand of Wadi Rum. A strange reminder that once upon a time, this part of the world was a little more linked than it is today.
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