After booking this trip so many months ago, our departure was finally here. We flew 2 hours from Brunei to Singapore. We met up with our group as seen above, and boarded our plane for a 12 hour flight to Istanbul, Turkey. After a short layover in Turkey, we were off on the final leg of our journey to Tel Aviv (another 2 hours) We had to take advantage of our time on the plane and get some sleep as when we landed in Israel we immediately started our sightseeing.
Our first stop after a quick falafel lunch was Caesarea By The Sea. Herod the Great built Caesarea in honor of Caesar Augustus during the 12 years from 25 to 13 BC. Herod was a man of great vision and wanted nothing less than to mirror Rome's glory in this tiny Jewish country. Unfortunately, the site was built on an unstable fault line on the Mediterranean shore. Over time the city sunk and most of what remains is buried with sand beneath the water.
Our next visit was to Mount Carmel. In biblical times, the heights of the Carmel mountains were considered the seat of Baal. Baal was believed to be the God of Weather and thunder because of the climate there. Elijah went to the top of the mountain to have a face-off between God and Baal. Elijah challenged the priests to have Baal himself ignite the altar. Elijah himself built an altar of his own, poured water over it and then called on God to ignite it. God did so as it is recorded in 1Kings 18:38. From the heights in which we were standing I imagine the fire that fell from heaven was seen for miles around.
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