Friday --- The Galilee

Today we spent the day around the Sea of Galilee. We go to the hotel pretty late last night, and everyone was pretty beat, but we still got going by 7:30 and had a full day. Overall, it was a great day. The weather was and sunny!!! Much better than Munster, that I am sure.

We started off by going to the Valley of the Wind and Doves, this is a valley that Jesus would have walked as he came from Nazareth to the Galilee. I had been up on Arabel before, but never on this path (at least not that I remember). It was pretty awesome. HOWEVER, when we got there I found out that I had taken my SD card out of my camera to upload the couple of pictures last night and forgot to put it back in. Lindsey came to the rescue and let me use her card. I owe her BIG time --- just don't tell her I say so! Not sure why I have the funky blue coloring in the first pictures, something I will need to work on when I get home.

Next we went to Kibbutz Nof Ginnosar --- it is here that the famous "Jesus Boat" is housed. It is pretty amazing, because it is a 1st Century boat.

After Nof Ginnosar we began our visits to the Jesus sites along the northern shore of the Sea. We started at the Mount of Beatitudes. Most everyone got a chance to read a story connected with the area. Following that we headed down the hill to the shore and the two sites known as Tabgha (a corruption of a word meaning seven springs). We visited the church of the Loaves and Fish and also the Church of the Primacy of Peter. They are next door to each other, but you have to drive around to get to them because they are controlled by different branches of Roman Catholicism.

We then drove the short distance to Capernaum --- the Primary outpost of Jesus in the Galilee. It is a great town, although you only see part because it is partially in control of the RC Church and another by the Greek Orthodox Church. We saw only the RC side.

We then we to lunch at Ein Gev. Matthew and I and a few others had St Peter's Fish (check out Matthew's pic in my flikr site.

Following lunch we continued down the Eastern side of the Sea to the Southern end when the Jordan River flows out of the Sea. We stopped at the tourist created Baptismal site --- fortunately it was not very crowded and we all paused to "remember our Baptisms". It was an amazing experience --- I am just glad no one wanted to go into the water because it was COLD!.

We finished up our day by taking a 45 minute drive up a crazy, winding road to the top of the Golan Heights to a little park to watch the sunset. It was a great way to finish our first day in Israel.

The pictures are up, but I had some problem tagging them --- I will try to get to them tomorrow, but I need to get to bed. Nancy is trying to go to sleep. We are up again at 6:00 am and on the road by 7:30. Going all the way North tomorrow to Mt. Hermon.