David Sokol Photography: Day 8 - travelling north along the borders

Another 8:00am start to the day, and today we're off to the religious and artistic town of Tzfat, one of the four Holy Cities, and the home of Kabalistic studies. We visited the amazing (no other word to describe it) artisan market, walking through a narrow lane way with artist's studios all along the way. We saw micro-calligraphy artwork, hand-woven religious clothes, ceramic art, brass and copper art works and acrylic painting using 24-carat gold mixed with the paint. We also visited the Joseph Caro and Ha' Ari synagogues looking at the damage caused by previous bombings of the town.

Tzfat has many narrow and winding roads and the bus driver showed great skill in manoeuvering along the roads and into tight parking area. We were in Tzfat at 11:00am when the two-minute siren sounded as a memorial to the fallen soldiers. Because there is an important cemetery in Tsfat there was a memorial service there at 11:00am and that caused a bit of a car-parking challenge. So much so that when we ready to leave town a car which had parked too close to one of the bends in a narrow exit road blocked the departure of the tourist buses. Traffic was quickly building up so what do they do? Our bus driver, together with our tour guide and another driver who couldn't get past tried pushing the car out of the way. Within minutes 10 soldiers who had been at the cemetery came to help and together they picked the car up and moved it 2 metres onto the footpath so that the traffic could get through. Only in Israel ......

From there we went drove through the Golan Heights, stopping at an observation point over the city of Kineitra looking at the UN offices set up to manage the demilitarised zone. We saw Israeli intelligence observation posts set up on a dormant volcano.

Then it was off for a quick lunch and onto Banias Falls which gave us a bit of a workout walking sown about 100 rock stairs to walk down to the falls and of course the same walk back! The falls run from the foot of Mt Hermon through to the River Jordan. And the photos were worth it. The weather was still warm today ahead of 4 or 5 days of showers so the walk was hard work.

Next we were off for a 4WD adventure to travel down the Hula Valley to the River Jordan. And it really was an adventure as we got thrown around the back of the vehicle. We had the chance to take some photos at one of the bridges that crosses over the River Jordan.

Then back to a kibbutz Lavi Hotel for a v-e-r-y subdued Independence Day celebration dinner (a single glass of wine!) then off to bed.