Caesarea was a port on the Meditarranean on the road between Tel-Aviv and Haifa. It was originally a Phoenician settlement, but became a city of about 100 000 inhabitants in Roman times as it was the capital of Palestine. It continued to be the capital through Byzantine, Arab, and Crusader ownership, but fell into disuse not long after Crusader times. On the right of the photo in the distance you might be able to see some of the ruins of the city. The amount of ruins from all these periods is quite staggering, and excavations are continuing. However, rebuilding is also going on, and the flavour of the rebuilding suggests that this site will be turned into a theme park of some kind as they are pouring new concrete to look like ancient ruins and installing these items at the site. This is unfortunate, especially considering the number of ancient buildings that remain; if you want to see Caesarea, go there before it is Disneyfied. It took us about 3 or 4 hours to get to Caesarea by bus and cab, and here we decided to have a little swim after a picnic on the beach.