Mix It Up With Marc

Welcome back for another journey down not only memory lane, but a fantastic place to explore!

One of our favorite weekend places to go in Israel was Caesarea. This is an ancient port city on the coast of Israel. In ancient times it was the city where Pontius Pilate governed the nation of Israel.

There are beautiful ancient Roman ruins everywhere.

We would walk along the beach where an ancient roman aqua duct came down from the mountains to provide the people of Caesarea with water. The place was beautiful, and in ancient times it was a large busy port city. Near the beach there is a stone with the name of Pontius Pilate inscribed on it. There are many marble statues of Roman leaders. Most of them had their heads lopped off by conquering armies.

There was also a very large amphitheater. I loved the beauty of Caesarea. In recent years archeologists have unearthed incredible artifacts. Many made of gold or silver. There must have been much wealth in Caesarea. We use to have picnics there and dig in the sand looking for ancient coins. We found a lot of them.

We would take them home and soak them in acid until all the hard dirt would dissolve off of them. The coins were made of copper or silver most of the time and would have eagles or roman soldiers on them. We would walk the beach and find pot shards, buttons and ancient iron nails in the water. Not far from Caesarea was a small town name Natanya. Out in the water was a sunken ship with two masts and the bow sticking up out of the water. I use to love walking down the beach to that site at sunset to see the sun go down behind that ship. It was a beautiful sight.

Not far from there was the ruins of an ancient… Stay tuned for my next post!

When I was a teenager my family lived in Israel because of my dad’s job. It was a great year we spent over there. Every weekend we traveled all over that country. Going to all the ancient ruins and sifting through the rubble trying to find coins or pot shards.

It was a wonderful time in my life. I’ll never forget visiting places like the old city of Jerusalem walking through the streets and buying food and exotic items in their little stores. I had great friends that I will never forget. Like Olav Ingstead, the Norwegian Ambassador’s son. He and I would rent horses for five dollars a day and ride them as fast as we could down the beach with the salt spray in our faces. We rode them over the dunes and explored the burned out remains of tanks and vehicles left there from past battles.

He and our friends would swim all day at the beach not far from our house. When we walked home we would often get in rock throwing fights with the Palestinian kids who didn’t like us cutting through their village. It was all in good fun and no one ever really got hurt. One day after one of these rock fights we headed home and found one of these Palestinian boys walking down the road. He didn’t see us until it was too late and we all piled on him and gave him a sound thumping. He ran off crying and we all got a good laugh. Later we stopped at a Cafe to get some sodas. As we drank them we saw a big Arab on a big motorcycle driving up. He wore the Arab headdress,a sweaty tee-shirt and bluejeans. But unfortunately on the back of the motorcycle was the same kid we had just beat up.

Stayed tuned! More about this adventure tomorrow!