Thursday, August 21, 2008

haifa part 2: the world's awesomist subway





Haifa is built on Mt. Carmel. It is the mountain where Elijah the Prophet zapped idols and confronted pagan gods. It is the center of the Bahai Religion (which will feature in Haifa Part 3). It is where the Catholic Carmelite Order was founded. And there is a winery named after it. It is also really steep. Mostly though, Mount Carmel is home to the world's awesomist subway. For my inner six year old who still likes big toys, it's cool, really cool.

It consists of one 1800 meter tunnel with 274 meters of vertical climb from bottom to top. There are two trains of two cars each. They are pulled by cable on one track with a short section of two tracks in the middle so as to avoid collisions. I rode three times (all for legitimate transportation reasons), but could easily have sat there all day and just gone up and down the hill. In fact, I don't have plans for next week...maybe I will.

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