| Submitted by: Mark Nowak United States |
| Submission Date: 11 February 2005 |
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Since it was Saturday and the Sabbath, traffic was very light. One other interesting note about the Sabbath was that in the hotels there was at least one elevator that was designated as the Shabbat elevator. It would go to every floor on the Sabbath without requiring any buttons being pushed. Before we left town, we stopped in White Square Park which had large white structures in it and more of those irrigation hoses. From there we could also see one of the alarm towers used during the Gulf War to notify the public that a SKUD missile possibly containing nerve gas was on its way. On hearing the alarm the inhabitants would don gas masks and shut themselves up into specially prepared rooms for the duration.
I was pretty exhausted today and had trouble staying awake on the bus. I was later told Rami even made a few comments about me. I sat on the left side towards the front. Rami had us shift back one seat at the start of every day of touring, allowing people from the back to move towards the front. Traffic got pretty bad on the highway, so we took a side road that was fairly narrow. We ended up being blocked by a parked car. I was roused to get off the bus to help move the car over on the side of the road. We had more than enough helpers, so we had no trouble shifting the car to make room for the bus. That was another thing I noticed about Israel -- the cars tended to be pretty small.
We followed the Mediterranean coast northwards to Caesaria where we walked on top of an old aqueduct at the beach and toured the old fortress which also had a moat. There was also a Roman theater there that could seat 6000 people and a mosque there. King Herod had built the place for Augustus Caesar. It was also the site of a Roman amphitheater and crusader fortress. We ate lunch in a fairly crowded cafeteria. Experiencing jetlag at its worst I went back to drifting in and out of sleep on the bus, occasionally opening my eyes to look out the bus window. I saw some vineyards which (according to the program) were the vineyards of the Baron Edmond de Rothschild. At Muhraqa on Mt. Carmel the view of the fertile Jezreel Valley was tremendous. We heard the story of how the prophet Elijah had won a contest with false prophets. The contest was to prove the existence of their gods. The prophets of Baal prayed for a fire to start and failed. Elijah's prayers to God, however, were answered. As a result, he had some 900 of them put to death and buried there.
On our way to our hotel in Haifa, we stopped for a short time in the Druze village of Daliyat el Carmel. The Druze split off from Islam about one thousand years ago. Their secret doctrine is described as Gnostic mysticism. They are divided into a majority who are kept in the dark about their religion and those who are initiated into the doctrine and lead the services on Thursdays. They are not considered to be Arabs in Israel. We checked into the Dan Panorama Hotel on the slopes of Mt. Carmel in Haifa. It was very nice. We were greeted with fruit drinks. I was in room 1807. I called my girlfriend Sara and my mom at home for the first time when I got to my room. I think this was the only time I allowed the porters to bring my luggage up to my room -- carrying it myself allows me to access my stuff without delay, and I feel goofy having someone carry my bag when I can do it easily enough. I was surprised to find a huge walk-in closet in my room.
We had a buffet dinner in the hotel. Afterwards, Rami took orders for optional excursions and collected payments in the room where we had our welcome drink. There were basically two excursions to choose from -- a day of sightseeing in Jerusalem and a special dinner which included a folk dance show. For the time being I signed up for just the tour. Shelley, Lois and I went for a walk to get a great view of the city beneath us. We covered the area on top, in and around our hotel pretty well. There was a mall connected to our hotel where a lot of people could be found. We then walked down the major street outside our hotel. At a McDonalds we priced a Big Mac and estimated it would cost us $3.30. Among the things we noticed were a martial arts school and some hangout, but we decided to go to a pub we noticed near our hotel. It was called the Little Haifa Pub. We sat down at a small table and ordered some of the local beer -- Goldstar. Instead of the peanuts and pretzels we were used to, we were given small cups of what seemed to be cole slaw. I treated.
I didn't stay up late, and I slept well that night.
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Sunday, February 26
HAIFA, AKKO, NAZARETH, CANA, SEA OF GALILEE
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My day started with a wake-up call at 6:30. After breakfast, we boarded our bus which first took us to a scenic overlook of Haifa. From there we could see the town sprawling beneath us towards the Mediterranean Sea. It was another sunny day, and we could see the light reflecting off the golden-domed Bahai Shrine which is the world center of the Bahai faith and where the founder of the religion is buried. The place is surrounded by beautiful gardens. When we reached the shrine, we had to take off our shoes to enter the building where the tomb can be seen. We learned that the religion which had its origin in Persia is only about 160 years old. Followers tithe a percentage of their income to the faith. Donations are not accepted from non-members. The faith values beauty which is why the believers spend millions of dollars on gardening. They believe that Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were all prophets of one God. They believe in the pursuit of peace.
We then drove on to the crusader city of Akko just north of Haifa still on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Akko became the capital of the crusader kingdom after it was conquered by Richard the Lion-Heart. There we saw an Ottoman fortress and toured the immense underground crusader city (complete with secret passages) and the vaulted crypt of the Knights of St. John. Rami had selected (drafted) me to bring up the rear to keep people from getting lost in the complex. This turned out to be more difficult than I expected because some people walked very slowly and were easily distracted by people selling things. The underground passage we went through had a catacomb feel to it.
Today we were the first ones at the cafeteria, so we got our food without having to wait long. Then we headed east, inland, towards Christian sites. When we reached the town of Nazareth in Galilee, we stopped at a scenic overlook to take a few pictures. In Nazareth, we visited the huge contemporary Church of the Anunciation. The church actually contains a lower and an upper church. We entered via the west entrance. A service was going on in the lower church where a the Grotto of the Anunciation can be seen. Upstairs in the upper church we saw images of the Virgin all along the walls made by artists from all over the world. I took pictures of the ones from the United States and Poland (and a cat sitting in one of the pews). A couple from Atlanta were bringing up the rear this time, and this time I was the one who was lingering.
We left the upper church through the north doorway and came into a courtyard where we found St. Joseph's Church. We went inside and then downstairs to a cave known as St. Joseph's workshop. The cave contains the remains of a cistern and a depression that was used for baptisms. It's said that area dates back to the time when Christ grew up. As we continued our drive eastward towards the Sea of Galilee, we stopped near Cana famed for being the place where Christ performed His first miracle by turning water into wine at a wedding. From the bus we could see two churches. Each contain jars claimed to be involved in the miracle -- the Franciscan church has one, and the Greek orthodox has two. The ones in the Greek Orthodox church, however, are probably no more than three hundred years old.
Our bus then took us to Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee (also known as Lake Tiberias and Lake Gennesaret). It's called a sea because there was no word for lake in the old Hebrew language -- the Mediterranean was known as the Big Sea. The lake is about 16 miles long and 6 miles wide and 690 feet below sea level. It's very scenic, and the unusual abundance of water make the surroundings very lush. It was even warmer because we were so far below sea level. We boarded a boat which took us on a short ride to the lakeside Kibbutz Ginosar. During the trip we could see the Golan Heights in the northeast toward Syria, the Mount of the Beatitudes and Capernaum and a village called Migdal from which Mary Magdalene got her last name -- Mary of Migdal. Rami threw food into the air to feed the seagulls which surrounded us. I have to admit I was impressed with my surroundings. It was quite a feeling to finally be someplace I had read about all my life.
At the kibbutz, we were shown a movie about a fishing boat that was recovered from the lake when the water level had dropped. It was about 2000 years old. We were greeted with grapefruit juice before we checked into our rooms (I was in room 108). Shelley and I were next door neighbors. Dinner was in the main complex. There were a large number of Asians also staying at the kibbutz. I think they were Japanese because after dinner I ended up sitting in on the end of a movie presentation about life on the kibbutz which I was told was in Japanese. I started to get sleepy. Most of our tour group came for the English slideshow presentation on the history of the kibbutz. It was given by a man who seemed to be in his sixties. He spoke with a monotone drone and from how little his lips actually moved I suspected he might have been the victim of a stroke. They picked the wrong person to give the talk because he managed to put many of us to sleep with his narration.
Afterwards, I took a walk on the roof of the main complex building. It was very calm. Before turning in, I took a walk down the pier that jutted out into the lake. It was tempting to try to look back into time. Passing someone fishing in a boat off on the side, I joined an Asian woman at the end of the pier. We definitely had language difficulty, but she motioned toward the sky and seemed to say stars. The stars were beautiful that night. As she walked away, she started to hum or sing softly. Not too long after that I returned to my room.
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Monday, February 27
CAPERNAUM, JORDAN RIVER, BET SHEAN, JERICHO, JERUSALEM
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I was up at 6:00 AM. On most days I had my wake-up call a half hour before the one chosen for the group because I didn't like to be rushed in the morning. It was going to be a sunny day. Today we'd be visiting some famous Biblical real estate. Rami would often start our morning drives with a lesson in Hebrew. On our drive towards the Mount of the Beatitudes on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee we passed a salty canal which served as a means of reducing the salinity of the lake. We also passed some banana crops in which the growing bananas were covered in plastic bags. Rami joked about how it looked as if it were a plastic bag crop. He told us that the modern roads were once old donkey trails which were optimally created by smart donkeys.
A couple of religious services were being held in various spots on the Mount of the Beatitudes. This place is considered to be where Christ gave his Sermon on the Mount and gave the eight Beatitudes. It rises above Capernaum to east and Tabgha and the kibbutz to the west. There is an Italian church there in which the walls inside form an octagon. |
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