Mel's Trip, Day 4

Today we went up north and visited the towns of Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, and Mt. Beatitudes. These are all northeast of Tel Aviv and close to one another in distance and it took us a couple of hours to get there. We first stopped in Nazareth, which was the town where Mary was from and where Jesus spent some time. The main attraction in Nazareth is the Church of the Ascension. This is reportedly the site where the angel Gabriel came to Mary to inform her of her destiny, although different Christian denominations have different beliefs on the exact location. Outside the church is a courtyard containing mosaics dedicated to Mary, created by various artists around the world. The church grounds were amazingly not busy, so we took our time looking around at all the art. We came across a couple of Indian gentlemen who worked for the UN and wanted to have our picture taken with us (really mostly with Nick). They approached Nick first because he looked Japanese and they thought he was with the UN as well. Apparently there are a number of Indian and Japanese UN workers in Israel right now - we came across other Indian UN workers at the Dead Sea yesterday too. Even though Nick explained to them that he wasn't with the UN, they wanted their picture with him anyway, and then they wanted a picture with me too. After the mini photo session we made our way inside the church. It's a very large church with an atypical setup. It has two levels - the upper level is the main church and the lower level consists of older churches that the new church was built upon, and also the cave where the Angel appeared to Mary. We just about had the place to ourselves, so we took our time in here. As we were making our way out, we saw a horde of Korean and African tourists making our way to the church. Good timing on our part. After the church we stopped into a bakery to get some snacks for the road, and then we made the short drive to Cana.

Cana, as you may remember, is the site of a wedding that Jesus attended and where he performed his first miracle by turning water into wine. There wasn't much to see in Cana except for a church built in honor of Jesus' miracle, called the Wedding Church. I thought for a moment how cool it would be to have your wedding at the Wedding Church. Maybe just a little hokey, but kinda cool. Again, when we got there the church was deserted. We went inside and looked around for a bit. It wasn't nearly as large as the Church of the Annunciation, so we really didn't spend a lot of time there. Afterward we went to the souvenir shop and browsed but didn't buy anything. Just as we were leaving an African tour group was coming into the church. Again, good timing. We left Cana and drove toward the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee is rather small. You can see all the way across. The first town we got to on the Sea was Tiberias, which seemed to be a vacation type town for Israelis. We went past Tiberias and drove north along the Sea until we got to the Mount of Beatitudes. This is the hill where Jesus is said to have preached the Sermon on the Mount ("Blessed are the poor in spirit..."). Today there is a church on the hill. The grounds were quite lovely and had a nice view of the Sea of Galilee, so we took some time to reflect and pray there. As with the other sites we visited today, there were very few visitors to the site.

Next we went to Capernaum, which is another town on the Sea. It is the hometown of St. Peter and also another place where Jesus spent a lot of time. We visited the church there, and right next to it were the ruins of an ancient synagogue. That was pretty neat to see. I've realized that some of my favorite things to see on this trip are ruins. It's amazing that something so old can still be somewhat standing. This place was also deserted - besides us, there was only another couple touring the site. We then went down the street to the Greek Orthodox church in Capernaum. If you've ever seen a Greek Orthodox church, you know that they are very ornately decorated on the inside. This one was no different. There were more people at this church, so we stayed only for a little while.

Our last stop was for dinner in Tiberias. We ate at a nice restaurant on the waterfront called Decks. As it was a little early for dinner as far as Israeli standards go, we were the only people in the restaurant. When we got there they were actually setting up for a bat mitzvah, so all the seats indoors were reserved. Fortunately they had some tables outside and were able to accommodate us. We had a fabulous dinner which included duck breast and lamb, and then we made the two-hour trip back to the hotel in Tel Aviv. We really lucked out today because we saw some really amazing sites but didn't have to fight any crowds to get through any of them.