Jesus' Stomping Grounds...

Today was another lovely exploration of Israel. I wasn't too pleased when I turned on the TV this morning to find CNN broadcasting about disturbances with the Palestine people in Gaza, which is not too far away from where we were yesterday in Ashdod and still pretty close to our port in Haifa today. Nevertheless I still wanted to go out and see the sights of Nazareth and Galilee. This was a new port for me since I had the infamous IPM duty last time we were here. It was a long day of touring ahead especially after volunteering myself to help out with the tour to Cairo the other day to see the pyramids and have lunch on the Nile. The pyramids were just as astonishing the third time around. How many people can say they've visited the pyramids of Giza 3 times? Not many. I also had a fabulous day in Yalta, Ukraine where I took a crew winery tour. To my surprise the wine made in Yalta was a lot sweeter than I expected. They mostly produce Sherries and ports because of the sugar content of the grapes in the region. I tasted wines that had up to 30% sugar in them. WHOA! It was like drinking a shot of cough syrup. It was thick and sweet. Whew! We did 12 tastings and the sugar content went up with each step. It was kind of hard to get through. Before all the drinking that day though we toured the actual winery and it was fascinating to see how all the wine was produced especially in the Ukraine. The actual port was pretty nice as well and definitely the Ukrainian get away with beaches, resorts and all. The next day was Varna, Bulgaria where I just spent the day absorbing the youthful vibe of this Black Sea resort town. I'd been there several times last year so I knew what I wanted to do for the day and it was not to sight see so much as people watch and take a look in the Eastern European stores. I took yet another crew tour in Kusadasi to Ephesus where we had a guide this time and we had our own fun amongst the Byzantine ruins. We also explored on our own via the subway systems in Piraeus, Greece to get to the ruins of Athens. Long days of fun and sun indeed.

Today was definitely an experience though. We started out bright and early at 7:00am getting off the ship in Haifa, Israel and loading up our busses for the trek out to Nazareth, which was about an hour away from the port city. Haifa itself looked pretty interesting, but it was hard to navigate out of the port area into the city. I had high hopes of exploring the city after the tour, but didn't realize how exhausted I'd be. We drove through the city before getting on the highways and our guide was spewing off history like mad. Unfortunately for me I had 3 hours of sleep the night before due to the intense socializing I've been doing since our young magician friend, Paul Dabek, got on board a few days ago. He promised us all that we'd be out living up the night while he was on board and he was definitely not kidding. It's funny how my wine glass "magically" refills itself whenever I'm not looking and I feel so compelled to empty the glass. Funny how I never seem to accomplish that feat lately. Tonight I'm taking a break since we have a show tomorrow. Anyway, I missed the morning drive history lesson and woke up somewhere around the city of Nazareth an hour later. Our first stop was a Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. This is where the Virgin Mary found out she was pregnant. Here there is s stream of water running from the surrounding springs for baptism. We then headed to the larger Basilica of the Annunciation a ways down the road, which was erected by the Italians. The church was built on top of the remains of where Mary used to live in her stone home. The stone foundation is still there and used as an altar and so are the remains of a previous Basilica erected in her honor. The church houses many displays and mosaics to the story of Jesus from different countries in the world. From here we made our journey to the Sea of Galilee, but not before we were sidetracked for a moment to a local garage for bus repair. The air conditioning broke while we were out and with temperatures in the 100s today that was not acceptable. After about 20 minutes of fiddling around at the garage they decided to relocate us to a different bus. This was a much better bus with reclining seats and all. We were off to Galilee. For some reason "Puff the Magic Dragon" popped into my head, but after listening I realized that ole Puff lived in Hanalei. You could still substitute Galilee in there though just for fun. Anyway another nap later and I woke up at Mt. Beatitudes where we visited a Basilica there built by the Italians in the 30s dedicating it to the 9 blessings of Jesus. It was set atop a gorgeous scenic overlook of the Sea of Galilee. Absolutely breathtaking. From here we went to the Church of Heptapegon. This is where Jesus presented the loaves of bread and fish to his followers. The beautiful mosaics on the floor still remain from over 2,000 years ago and the slab where this communion took place still stands. After we left here we headed to our lunch venue. Surprisingly it was in an area where you could eat AND get gas. I was a little uneasy about eating there, but I soon learned that the look of the place didn't matter at all. We were given hot pita bread with many choices of toppings including hummus, tibouli, souvlaki, corn salad, olives, cucumber salad, and more. It was all very delicious. I had the Mediterranean chicken and was glad that I made that choice since the fish dish was actually a whole fish (head and all) served on a platter. It came from the Sea of Galilee, but I couldn't have gotten past the scales and the head. Let alone all the bones. The chicken was absolutely delicious. From here we headed to an area where Jesus lived through his childhood, Capharnaum. At this point we learned that because of time issues we would be missing a deep in the Sea of Galilee (which was the whole reason I wanted to come out today) so we took a little sidetrack ourselves to the sea ourselves. It was a small group of renegades. Our guide tried to deceive us at first by coming up with this story of how the winds on the sea at this time of day were too dangerous for swimming. She must not have noticed all the windsurfers out there as she was saying this to us because we all doubted her story at that moment. Especially since most of us lived through the 60-foot monster wave in high winds back in January. We looked out on the sea and didn't see any white caps on the waves. It couldn't have been that dangerous. The chants began to see the sea and then we drove by a beach area where all the locals and tourists were swimming away in the sea just as she was telling us that no one swims in the sea at this time of day. Woops. She then confessed that it was not on the original schedule and that we couldn't go there today to swim in the sea. Therefore this led to a small mutiny of 8 of us who strayed for a moment to walk down the street from Capharnaum to wade in the sea. It was great fun and well worth it. The sea was incredibly warm and we got some fun pictures. We caught back up to the tour in Capharnaum and listened to a little more history and some more passages from the bible. I forgot to mention that as we stopped at all these places along the way, we got a history lesson and bible passage pertaining to the sight. After we left the old home of Jesus himself, we headed back to Haifa on our 2-hour trek. It was a lovely and exhausting day out. I managed to catch a small bit of the show that was brought on board by Shalom Israel and it was interesting. Now, I lay my head down for a long and restful sleep. Ahh. Sea Day tomorrow. Whew.