Joe Pallugna TEL AVIV--Passing through the Coastal Plains on the way to the city of Haifa from Tel Aviv, our group stopped by the ancient city of Caesaria. It was built around 10 BC by King Herod The Great, and he named the city after his benefactor Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. Although only the ruins of a once majestic city now remain, the grandeur of its architecture is still visible. There is a coliseum so huge that it resembles twice the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, and the gladiators’ fights organized by Herod and his successors caused the deaths of thousands of slaves. There is also the ruins of a hippodrome, of the port area that once jutted out 10 hectares into the Mediterranean Sea, the ampitheater, wide roads and plazas with fountains, and the long remains of the Roman Aqueduct that once ran for more than 10 kilometers to supply fresh water to the outlying city parts. This Roman Aqueduct had been so imposing in its beauty that it had become the poster card of many tourism promotions and the site of thousands of pre-wedding photo shoots. Built of a mixture of limestone rocks and pozzola cement from Italy, it stood over centuries surviving the winds and the sea. Then we drove to Haifa, the centuries-old port city and now a location of industries and modern commerce. Part of the beauty of the Haifa heights is the reknowned The Hanging Gardens of Haifa which includes The Terraces of the Shrine of Bab which were built by the Baha’i Faith, which was founded by Baha’Ullah, a follower of Bab, a spiritual figure of the 1850s. The Hanging Gardens’ and The Arc Gardens’ layout and assymetrically grown plants are a beauty to behold. Thousands of tourists arrive there every day and the awe on their faces as they admire the gardens are just as marvelous. Late lunch was had then after the visit to the Grotto of Rosh HaNikra in the northmost city of Nahariyya which allowed us a very near access to the rumbling and frothing waves of the Mideterranean which creeped underneath the white chalk cliffs and slammed into the cavernous tunnels. One could feel the power of the waves gushing in as it had for thousands of years in the past. This Grotto is located just a few meters from the Beirut-Israeli border which allowed us to enter into part of the land of Lebanon under the steely eyes of Lebanese security forces. Thus, the Israel tour allowed me not only the chance to step into Palestine in Bethlehem a week earlier, but also to step into Lebanon in the north of the Holy Land. This highway to Haifa from Tel Aviv required us to pass through the Coastal Plains of Israel, irrigated and recovered from the marshlands of centuries past by draining the waters and installing irrigation canals, and are now planted with hundreds of hectares of grapes and olive trees, of date palms and vegetables and rice and berries and plums. Agriculture here is so scientifically advanced. And along the Coastal Plains, we passed by the hills known in biblical records as the Armageddon, the supposed last place of battle before the end of the world. Mount Armageddon is referred to in a place in Israel as Tel Megiddo, the Hill of Megiddo, about 40 kilometers from the Sea of Galilee which we also went into the next day, is mentioned in the Book of Revelation of the Holy Bible as the last battleground. But Tel Megiddo now is peaceful and purely agricultural with no telling notice of its supposed historical role in the Bible when the world comes to an end. Whether it is mere symbolic or literal, the hills of Armageddon or Tel Megiddo have served as the ancient trade and imperial route between Egypt in the south and the Empires of Syria and Mesopotamia in the north. The tour ended with low battery loads of the cellular phones and cameras of the tourists whose pictures of the Holy Land are not only telling memories of the land of the birth, the life and the death of Jesus but also of having better understanding of the stories of our religion in an actual walk on the pages of history.   E-mail: ajpallugna@gmail.com