Akko

We are still in Akko. After the Crusaders Citadel, we visited Akko’s main marketplace and the spice market. I love to visit the markets when we travel. Thanks to Noa, our guide, we also got to smell, taste, drink, and listen our way around the markets.

Noa also had some other surprises for us in Akko.

This was our group heading into the main marketplace. Akko had a great look and feel to it.

We met this man at the David Miro Copper workshop. We also got to see him work. You can see a little of his work around him but the walls were covered with his work and it was very impressive.

This might have been my favorite stop in Akko. Maruan here (on the right) is a 4th generation spice store owner. He let us smell several handfuls of his spices that are in the jars in front of him and he also gave us some Cardamon coffee. WOW, the coffee was strong but it had incredible flavor!

Noa, our guide, surprised us with a boat ride with Captain Salim out in the Akko harbor. I always enjoy seeing a city or town from that viewpoint as it always gives me a different perspective on the place.

After lunch, we had another surprise. We walked the Templars Tunnel. The Templars were a Christian military-monastic order. The tunnel connected the Templars Palace to the port. Our guide said that when the Ottoman’s took over Akko, they understood that the Templars had a lot of gold in their area of the port. The Ottoman’s said that the Templars could leave but the gold stayed. The Templars left but when the Ottoman’s got inside their port area, there was no gold and they couldn’t understand how the Templars had gotten it out. The tunnel was buried and forgotten about in the 13th century and only uncovered recently when a citizen had a plumbing problem and in trying to fix the problem, they discovered this tunnel. I searched of course, but they evidently didn’t drop any gold on their way out of the tunnel.