April Newsletter - Travel

Tzipori, Nahalal Arms Stash, and Valley Train Stations

Tzipori

Tzipori was once the capital of the Galilee, the seat of the Sanhedrin and the place where the Mishna was completed. The remains of a magnificent city were discovered at Tzipori. They include a system of streets, public buildings, dwellings, a theater, a central market, bathhouses, a synagogue, a fortress, and churches. The paving stones of the central city market (Cardo) clearly show the grooves caused by the wheels of the carts that travelled over them for many years. Why is it called Tzipori? Because in the Talmud it says that it was perched on the top of the mountain like a bird ?. The mosaics at Tzipori are some of the most beautiful and well preserved that we have seen.

Nahalal Arms Stash

From Tzipori we continued on to Nahalal and were privy to an interesting talk by a third generation moshavnik there who told us the story of the slick (hiding place for weapons from the days of the British mandate) on their family land. It had been disguised as a pit for storing the urine of cows from the nearby cowshed!

Valley Train Stations

In Kfar Yehoshua we visited one of the first and most impressive stations of the Valley Train. The railway, built at the beginning of the 20^th century by the Turks, connected Haifa and Daraa in Trans-Jordan, as well as Damascus! Try to imagine yourself today taking the train from Haifa to Damascus!!

We got a vegetarian lunch at a family-owned home-cooked meal kind of place called Ma’adaniyat Yaffa and took it with us to our last stop – the Alroy Valley Train station. The small station at Alroy stopped working over the years, the station was neglected, and the land was covered by thorns and weeds, but the people in the area have restored and reconstructed it. The train cars are painted in bright colors, and it was a lovely place to have our picnic and complete our outing.