Acre? Akko? Akka?

In a spur of the moment decision, my friends and I made hostel arrangements and hopped on the bus to go to the small city of Akko. While not impossible to get to, it’s not easy. After a two hour bus to Haifa and then an hour bus to Akko, we arrived in the tiny bus station and made our way to the hostel. Usually we might try to wander around the city, but when we got to the Old City, most everything was shut down by 7:30. The hostel was FREEZING! Granted the outside world was rainy and cold, but the stone building was even colder than outside. We thought that we had to pay for heat, so we didn’t say anything for a day until it was so cold that we really couldn’t take it anymore. Then we found out that they had just forgotten to give us the remote…. The actual Old City was gorgeous, but a lot of it was still under excavation. We first went to the Prisoners Museum, which was a British fortress and prison where Haganah and Etzel members were held prisoner and executed. We got to see the Prisoner’s cells, including the special treatment cells and the death row cells. We got to walk with the “prisoners” as they did their exercise in the yard and got to see the gallows where members of radical Jewish groups were executed. Moving on from the Underground Prisoners Museum we went to the Hospitaller’s fortress and entered the vaulted halls of the Middle Ages. The courtyard of the fortress is still being excavated and there but it was still fascinating how preserved that this was. It was all buried was buried and to form the foundations for several buildings that were built on top of it. My favorite part was wandering though the little tunnels underneath the city… which was actually the sewer system.  But it was still really cool! Especially since we came up out of the tunnels in a completely random part of the city, which actually happened a second time when we went to the Templar Tunnels. The tunnels were built after Saladin’s defeat and were intended to be a safe passage for pilgrims in case of another attack.  Luckily the old city does have fantastic signs and we were able to find our way back fairly quickly. Before heading to our next stop, we went to what is supposed to be the best hummus restaurant in Israel. It actually wasn’t bad, which is rather high praise, considering I don’t even really like hummus. It was really busy and I’ve never seen waiters balance and carry so much stuff at one time! From the restaurant we went to the old Turkish Bath with a rather cool multimedia presentation, but other than that it was a bit of a let down. :P I was a fascinating old city that was surrounded by so much history.