Day 3 Thursday April 18th Holy Land Trip

We started off the day with the breakfast buffet in the hotel.  Some of the food was 'interesting' to say the least.  Some were a little disappointed at not having any live entertainment, but not me. We left the hotel at 8 am and headed north for Galilee with some stops along the way.  The first one was Caesarea Maratima, a few miles up the coast from Tel Aviv.  This picture shows Jan and Mike under the National Park sign.  They had received some bad news during the night.  Jan's brother, who lived in Missouri had died of a heart attack.  He was 63 years old and had not been sick.  Please pray for Jan and Mike and her family.

 Moti is telling us that the Romans built the exact same theaters in several places in their empire.  After we left the theater we saw this bird. It is the Israeli state bird, the hoopoe.

 

Joe and Rodja enjoying brotherly fellowship in the Holy Land.

We left Caesarea and drove a few miles north to our second destination, Mount Carmel.  Moti is giving us some information about the overlook we are about to see, showing the Jezreel Valley. 

This is a part of the valley that will see a lot of action in end times.  Many believe this valley to be the scene of the opening events of the Battle of Armageddon. It took five pictures to get it all recorded.  It was cloudy and hazy so not too good of a picture.

On our way down Mount Carmel we were stopped when a man, meeting us, got out of his car and started a very animated conversation with Moti.  We did not know what was going on. 
For a minute it seemed that they would come to blows.  The man got back in his car and drove off and Moti said that the man had a little restaurant in the Druze town down the mountain.  He was drumming up business and Moti asked if we were adventurous and wanted to chance eating lunch there.  We said 'Why not?', and headed off to who knew what.  It turned out to be an interesting experience.  The picture below shows three of about 15 dishes he brought to the table.  Some of the food was good and some 'so-so', but we enjoyed the experience. 

We left the Druze village and headed for Nazareth.  Our first stop was Nazareth Village, a recreation of a first century town.  We had a good guide there and everyone enjoyed seeing the animals, people dressed in period costumes, furnished rooms, such as this one room house, shown below, and several other things.

We left there and headed for the Church of the Annunciation that is built over the place where tradition says the angel told Mary that she was going to have a baby.  Jan and Mike (below) are resting while Moti, our guide, was briefing us on what we would see when we went  into the church.

We made the rounds in this huge church and then headed over to St Joseph's church about a block away.  After spending a little time there we headed for Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, our headquarters for the next three days.  We gassed the van up (check the prices below for one liter).  We then checked into the resort there. We all headed for the buffet, which was pretty nice.  It had quite a variety of food and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  After dinner we had a devotional time with Dale sharing with us some scriptural connections to the places we visited today.  Our guide, Moti, joined us for this time.

Well, it's 12:50 pm, so off to bed.  Hopefully more tomorrow.