Israel: The Coast and the North

It seems I can once again post pictures, and thank God, because the view from atop Mount Precipice was just spectacular.

So we crossed in to Israel to meet our tour guide, Dani. He's extremely difficult to understand and goes off on tangents and talks incessantly on his cell phone, but when you actually get him talking at the site he knows his stuff. He should probably be teaching in Hebrew at a community college. Fortunately, that didn't detract from the trip at all.

Pictured: Dani in his element.

Driving from the Jordanian border at the Allenby-King Hussein bridge, we passed Jerusalem to see Jaffa and settle in for the night in Tel Aviv. Our bus got stuck on the tiny back roads, squished between merchant's booths for about twenty minutes. Absolute absurdity! Here we added several new people to the tour who were only doing the Israel portion. Without mentioning everyone, one new-comer was Laurie, whose family is visiting her but who herself lives here and will be an excellent guide to the practicalities of negotiating Israel and the West Bank.

After a rather dull night out on the town, wherein the only excitement was getting lost and worrying Maria on my way back to the hotel, we headed north the next morning for Caesarea Maritima. This port was built by Herod the Great in the first century BC, but was most prominently used by the Romans as their provincial capital of Judea after the AD 6 takeover. We didn't spend nearly enough time here, but I ought to be going back with St. George's College and, failing that, for a full day shortly before Maria arrives. Somewhat disappointing was the famous theater, pictured above, which is so thoroughly resored that it serves as a modern amphitheater complete with railings and lights.

No matter, the remainder of the day was amazing. Our next top was Mount Carmel, which is more of a mountain range with one particular peak sticking above the rest. Here Elijah challenged the pagan prophets see whose god was more powerful, Baal or Yahweh, and ended with an exploding cow and a mass slaughter. Today a monastery sits atop it, but most impressive it the view:

On a clear day, you can see the Mediterranean to the west and Nazareth and Mount Tabor to the north. The picture, of course, cannot to it justice.

We ate lunch in a Druze village, and I must say, it's nice to finally get hummus, falafel, pita: all those things I expected but just weren't there in Egypt or Jordan.

From there we went to Megiddo. For those not in 'the know,' a tel is an artificial mound composed of cities built atop cities. At Megiddo, there are some twenty such layers. There were pottery shards just spread across the ground, so I picked two up: one for myself, and one for David. There was an underground water system that you can crawl though, as well; pictures are on Facebook.

The last stop for the day was atop Mount Precipice, from which you can get a very nice view of Nazareth and Mount Tabor (first picture). Unfortunately, our tour guide insisted that there is "nothing to see" in Nazareth, and so we all passed it by. Of course, I'll be going there several times, but it's hard to justify calling the Church of the Annunciation, the largest church in the Middle East, and Nazareth Village, an outdoor living museum of first century village life, "nothing."

No matter. That evening we went to Tiberias and slept just south of the city on the Sea of Galilee.

The next day we did the Galilee and the Golan. We began the day with a boat ride across the lake from Tiberias to Ginnosar, where he saw the famed Jesus boat. The boat almost certainly did not belong to Jesus or his disciples, but it is an excellent example of a first century fishing boat. From there we saw the Church of the Beatitudes, and then drove north via Kiryat Shmona to Caesarea Philippi.

Caesarea Philippi was constructed at the base of Mount Hermon in the far north of Israel by the son of Herod the Great, Herod Philip (thus the name), who inherited this portion of his father's land (hopefully I shall soon make a post on the Herodian dynasty, once I do the previously promised one on the exodus). The site had long been in use as a shrine to the mischievous god Pan, and is now known as Banias (because Arabs, who long controlled the site, cannot pronounce their Ps). It is more well known to us as the place where Peter made his confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and where Jesus in turn told his disciples that upon that rock he would build his church. It is also, significantly, the mouth of the Jordan River.

That afternoon we saw several sites related to the ministry of Jesus around the northern shore of the sea of Galilee, namely Tabgha, the location of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, and Capernaum, the ancient town that Jesus used as his base camp. The ruins here are truly impressive, and include a late first century synagogue built atop the one used in Jesus' day, presumably by the Lord himself.

So that evening it was back to Tiberias for another night, and so ended our romp along the coast and in the north.