The Bahai gardens in Haifa are considered the must-see in the city. Off-limits to the general public, except on guided tours, one has only one opportunity per day to get in and see them up close. The English language tour starts at noon and I had a lazy morning with coffee, breakfast and a little more coffee. 12 Shekels! 12! I paid 2 in Ramallah!

The gardens certainly are nice, although I wouldn’t travel all the way to Haifa just to see them. They are only gardens, albeit nice ones. After the tour I got on the local bus, following information from the tourist centre, and travelled up north to Akko. It is an old Arabic port town and is said to have a beautiful old city.

While the old city isn’t too bad, it certainly suffers from tourism. That’s a personal objection of mine though, just can’t stand places where all the infrastructure is aimed at tourists (and thus overpriced and mediocre). In addition,

I felt a little sad about having to leave Palestine. In a very short time I had met a lot of amazing people. It wasn’t just the incredibly friendly and hospitable locals but also the travellers who had made their way into the West Bank.

After a last Arabic coffee (cardamom flavoured), I got onto the local bus to Jerusalem. It is always a somewhat cramped experience, especially with a full size backpack between my legs.

Fellow travellers had told me that security checks at Qalandia are arbitrary and can take from five minutes to an hour (more if you’re Palestinian). At the checkpoint military police boarded the bus and checked IDs.

The woman examining my passport told me “you are too young, you can’t stay on the bus”. Well thank you for the compliment, but…???