Mix It Up With Marc

If you remember from my last post, I was just about to describe the sunset… Here’s where we pick it up again…

Not far from there was the ruins of an ancient roman glass factory called Apallonia by the sea. During the roman occupation there had been a civil uprising. The glass factory was overthrown and the huge vats of molten glass were poured over the cliffs into the ocean below. To this day the beach is covered with green and blue round globs of glass that has rolled in the surf for two thousand years. It’s a beautiful stretch of beach with all the color. I brought home some of this glass and my father had a piece of it set in a gold ring for my mother.

My friend Olav and I went there quite often to dig for relics. After the battle was over they buried the dead under piles of rocks. So Olav and I would look for mounds of rocks and dig there. Once we found the remains of someone who was killed in that battle. There was a hole in the back of the skull and when I washed the dirt out with a hose I found a piece of flint that was the tip of a spear head. We also found a ring on one of his fingers. Most of the bones were pretty much crumbling away. But to this day I still have the skull who I named George.

There was also an old empty Mosque that was very big and fun to explore. Off the side of the cliffs were a lot of caves that we would climb down and explore hoping to find something but we never did. But we spent many days in the sun swimming and exploring. It was a lot of fun. Memories that I shall never forget, I loved hunting for relics. The country is rich in history. A person would often find some ancient relic just digging in their garden. One day I plan to go back to Israel. To see those sites again, the house where we lived. Where I went to school and the places I use to go down at the beach. I know after more than thirty years a lot has changed. As an adult I know I will appreciate the antiquity much more. There was so much I didn’t understand as a teenager.

But one day I know I will return.

Tags: ancient relic, antiquity, bones, caves, civil uprising, dirt, glass factory, globs, gold ring, molten glass, more than thirty years, mosque, mounds, olav, piles, relics, roman glass, roman occupation, skull, spear head, vats