NAZARETH and the SEA of GALILEE

Oh my goodness. 

Jerusalem was absolutely fabulous and we had the most brilliant day ....but our time in Nazareth and around the Sea of Galilee was just SUPERB. TEN out of TEN -  it will take some beating. 

Once again DROR did an excellent job as tour guide, making our day so much fun.

We went in and out of a lot of churches, gatecrashed a wedding, helped ourselves to dates and figs, ate St Peter's fish, smashed an ipad and tried to walk on water. It was an AMAZING day. 

Dror, thank you so much.

First stop....was.... NAZARETH 

and although Nazareth itself is a bit grim (am I being a bit harsh there?)  it has the beautiful 

BASILICA of the ANNUNCIATION, 

a Roman Catholic church,

(the largest church in the Middle East)

built over the house where Mary lived and where she was visited by the Angel Gabriel who said

Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: 

Luke 1: 26-28

It is a church of 2 levels - a modern church built over a Byzantine church built over Mary's house.... all the levels of Dror's lasagne simile!

The surrounding courtyard is filled with beautiful tiled and mosaic pictures depicting Mary. They were gifts from countries all around the world portraying Mary as their particular country saw her.

 FULL GALLERY HERE. 

I'm not sure what Canada were thinking... (?!!)

 CLICK HERE as these stunning photos are so much better than mine!

The grotto where the angel Gabriel visited Mary to announce she would be the mother of Jesus.

M M M M the letter M for Mary everywhere you look, even in the M M M Magnificent cupola.

I love this statue of Mary. "Pregnant?? Who, ME??"

Next door to the Basilica of the Annunciation is the Church of St Joseph built over remains of a residential property and where Joseph, Mary and Jesus lived.

This was a lovely, simple church

The grotto where Joseph lived.

Meanwhile just down the road.....

 The Greek Orthodox Church believe Angel Gabriel visited Mary as she was collecting water from the well. So they built THEIR church ten minutes walk away from the Basilica of the Annunciation.

Great photos here of the highly decorated interior of the Church and also of the spring where Mary would have collected water. I DID like the idea of this being the place of annunciation -  anyone could have lived in the grottos where Mary's house stood but here there was definitely a spring and a well.

George slaying the Dragon. He featured in a lot of paintings!

Walking back to the car we passed a local family store selling all the spices you could think of, nuts and seeds and pulses, dates and figs. I was a bit open mouthed when Dror just helped himself to the dates and figs and then offered us some. They WERE delicious but I was, like,  are we allowed??? 

=)

So tasty!

CANA  was our next stop.

We  GATECRASHED A WEDDING!!!!

5 couples were renewing their wedding vows at the church in Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine at that famous wedding feast. There was guitar playing and hugging and smiling and when they get home and look at their video they will be wondering who are those 3 at the back of the church?  =)

Saint Bartholomew was featured in the paintings as he lived in CANA. I have a fondness for Bartholomew, having nearly given birth to one.

St Bartholomew

So having joined in the Cana wedding celebrations (and having thrown up all through my 33rd wedding anniversary a few days before) it was a good opportunity to have a schneaky peck on the way out as Husb and I are still getting along just fine.

Meanwhile, just down the road...

The Greek orthodox believed Jesus turned the water into wine HERE and so built THEIR own church just round the corner.

(are you seeing a pattern developing here?!)

RIVER JORDAN

No, this isn't me! 

But you could get yourself a white robe and go into the River Jordan (although this wasn't EXACTLY the  place where Jesus was baptized)

Just look at these dates!  Dror drove us through a kibbutz where they had loads of dates in nets because they were nearly ready for harvesting. YUM! (If you remember we had helped ourselves to some dates earlier when we were in Nazareth) =)

But we were ready for lunch! 

St Peter's fish was on the menu! 

There is a lovely restaurant on the banks of the beautiful Sea of Galilee which sells St Peter's fish and it did not disappoint. Huge flakes of prime white flesh and if you were prepared to pick it up with your fingers....

...you could do a good job of demolishing it!

DELISHFISH!

I used my fingers!

CAPERNAUM

The statue of St Peter the fisherman.

 

St Peter's Church built over the remains of his house which you can see through the glass floor.

..next to ruins of other houses 

..and the synagogue. How do we know it was a synagogue?

The altar was facing Jerusalem. There were inscriptions on the walls. There was a place reserved for the Bible.

"Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church"

Matthew 16.18

And here is the church that was built upon the rock... inside...

and outside....

We had eaten St Peter's fish and visited his church, so now we had to try to walk on water but it was quite tricky to say the least. The Sea of Galilee is 200 feet below sea level, (IT WAS SO HOT) and is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth but we still couldn't walk on it...

This was the best I could do.

Mount of Beatitudes 

Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL. Beautiful. BEAUTIFUL.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

The ceiling walls of this GORGEOUS church are in an octagonal shape. You can see the Sea of Galilee out of every window on all 8 walls and the verses of the Sermon on the Mount are displayed on each wall too. 

The sermon on the mount focuses on 9 verses:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake".

Simple but beautiful.

The Sermon on the Mount

Dates, dates so many dates =) YUM

The miracle of the loaves and fishes

The Sea of Galilee

The photo above was overlooking a banana plantation (now) but this was the place where Christ delivered his Sermon on the Mount - it is a natural bowl so his voice would have carried - it was like a natural theatre and ideal for delivering a speech.

I can't tell you how much we enjoyed this day. Absolutely staggeringly superbly wonderful.

It was so, so good. THANKYOU THANKYOU DROR    =)

But we had to get back to Riviera for a late dinner.

Jerusalem

Riviera docked in Haifa, Israel, so we had a 2 hour drive to Jerusalem but the roads were good and they were clear and we had our personal guide DROR entertaining us all the way so the time flew by. What a great time to visit this Holy city - It was the end of Ramadan so there was a great buzz about the place, everyone getting ready to party party party and barbeque barbeque barbeque....

Dror was fantastic! Ex Army tank Commander turned Tour Guide - he was great fun.

DROR ("Draw") and HUSB

First stop - Looking across to Jerusalem from The Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives has been used as a cemetery for 3,000 years and holds 150,000 graves, including the grave of Robert Maxwell, media tycoon.

  People are prepared to pay huge amounts of money to be buried here. They wanted to be buried as near to God as possible to be ready for the second coming. Basically they wanted to be first in the queue. 

But it was time to get really holy. We would soon be feeling extremely holy, you can't help it when you walk through Jerusalem. Dror drove round and parked up and we walked through the arcade towards the Old Town....

walking through the Jaffa Gate into the Old Town to visit the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

It doesn't look much from the outside does it? A couple of normal looking doors ...and... a ladder??!!

But this huge Church , which is actually several churches within a church, 

is built on what Christians call Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified, and annointed to be buried and so contains the last 5 stations (out of 14) of the Via Dolorosa "The Way of The Cross"

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

So although it is nothing dynamic outside, inside it is magnificent! It is also quite humbling. I think even non Christians would feel a sense of  awe and importance about this place which is so steeped in history. Some visitors were moved to tears, there was crying and praying and lighting of candles, it is a powerful, emotional place.

We were lucky to visit at a  "quiet" ish time which is almost unheard of for a place such as this with tour after tour after tour visiting so we didn't have to queue for long to see the altar built above the rock where the crucifixion took place.

Above is the Crucifixion Altar, built over the rock where the cross would have stood.

We were able to kneel and touch the Rock.

I got some holiness from the Stone of The Annointing. 

There are various theories as to whether this really was the tomb of Jesus...

 

 the Roman Emperor Constantine1 discovered this tomb - his mother Helena found remains of wood and nails of the cross....

 

but  while we were there Husb had SUCH an almighty crack on the head coming out of the small, low-roofed tomb that he started to consider the meaning of such a fierce and powerful bump...

Some prefer to believe Jesus was buried here in this tomb offered to Him by Joseph of Arimathea. The fact that these tombs were found certainly proves this was an area used for burials.

Popular tradition has it that Jesus stumbled 3 times while carrying the cross to his crucifixion and His third fall is represented by the 9th station on the Via Dolorosa (there are 14 stations in all) It is actually JUST outside the Via Dolorosa and situated at the entrance to the Coptic Orthodox Church of St Anthony which forms part of the roof of the Chapel of St Helena in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Coptic Orthodox Church. Crosses reflecting crosses reflecting crosses.

This an interesting article. (READ IT HERE)   Dror told us how the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been in the same family for years. This article explains how, as a family, they keep the peace between the 5 competing Christian denominations all jealously managing their areas of the Church, I think Dror said a priest of each denomination stayed inside the Church overnight as no-one could be trusted to be left alone.

"MIKE'S CENTRE"!

Yes, we came across MIKE'S CENTRE! And then walking through a local school it was lovely to see the young boys playing football. It doesn't matter what religion, boys just love to kick a ball around.

Part of our tour included a visit to the City of David so we headed towards the Dung Gate.

This is looking back up to the Mount of Olives where we had first stopped this morning.

We exited the Old Town through the Dung Gate and prepared to walk through the tunnels of the place where it all started...The City of David

 

 

It was a walk through the 2,000 year old underground water tunnels through which the city was conquered and residents fled. We could have walked in illuminated darkness through the water of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, where water has flowed since the time of the prophets AND STILL FLOWS NOW but we opted to keep our feet dry- some people were thigh deep in in water using only torchlight to guide them, I'm afraid I felt a  bit too claustrophobic for that! It is amazing to think these tunnels were excavated by workers with none of our modern day tools and even more amazing -the digging started from the 2 ends and miraculously met in the middle!

We came out into the bright sunshine next to the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, built by Herod the Great in the first century BC. It is the most holy place in the world for Jews.

Males and females must stay separated here.The male side is far bigger that the female side. It was quite quiet here when we visited it- but later tonight it would be crazy busy with people celebrating the end of Ramadan.

Inside the male rooms to the side...

The Wailing Wall.

pomegranites

We are fit people but having done a lot of walking, loads of steps, a bit of tunnelling, and some praying we were ready for a glass of freshly squeezed pomegranite juice and a light 4pm "lunch" before heading back to the boat. What a totally brilliant day.