Holy Cow! Holy Land!!: Cheeky Bugger

These last four days, Char and I took a trip up north with some of our coworkers to see more of Israel. I’d definitely have to say that one of the favorites of the trip was having along a philosophical Canadian and a cheeky Brit, cause when you put those together, along with some American sarcasm, it makes for a lot of fun.

Really, it was just nice to get out of the west bank for a while and see something new. We stayed in Nazareth at night, in this really swank guest house at a British hospital and by day took trips around to Caesarea, Haifa, and Akko, as well as the beach for a dip in the Mediterranean.

On our way up we stopped in Caesarea to check out the old harbor and fortress that had been destroyed by the numerous battles fought over it. There were some really cool ruins there. Originally built by Herod (yup, that one), it was his dream city/deep sea port and at the time the largest on the Mediterranean. After several years, there was a Jewish revolt once the Romans squashed them, they began slaughtering them and other religious types in the gladiator games in the city’s Hippodrome. The port was laid siege to many times and passed hands to the Crusaders, the Byzantine Muslims and then eventually fell to ruins.

That used to be a watchtower/lighthouse, but now it’s a little museum/gift shop

Ancient hot tub baby

What’s left of the hippodrome, where they had the chariot races and gladiator games. Those blocks down in front are the old starting gates.

The foundations of ad old house

Bleachers of the Hippodrome, taking a break

What’s left of the old governance hall. Check out Acts 25, this is where they think Paul was tried before being sent to Rome. He had a great view

The old theater, which has been modernized a bit. They still do plays here.

Poop pot.

The next day we stuck around Nazareth and checked out the sights there. Not a whole lot, but it’s the city where Jesus went through puberty and they’re pretty proud to have at least that. The two main attractions were the Basilica of Annunciation (Mary’s home/where the Angel visited her and told her she had a little bun in the oven) and Nazareth Villiage, one of those touristy places with the actors all dressed up and working how they did in a certain time period, in this case, the time of Jesus. At the Basilica, they have these huge murals all around the courtyard and inside the church of depictions of Mary and Jesus. Each mural is from different country. It was cool to see how different cultures see and portray the icon. Here’s a few:

Thailand (that plate got cut out)

Japan

Mexico

And of course, The US, which is kind of odd. It does make a little more sense when you read the description (below), but still…

Some pics of the church itself:

The best stain glass I’ve seen

Off to the left a little, in the cave, is where thing Mary was visited by Gabriel. We couldn’t go down there, they were having some sort of service.

The second level of the church

Oh yeah, at one point we wandered past Mary’s well, where several people have deducted that it must have been the well where Mary, and thereby Jesus, got their water from. It was quite unimpressive, a hole in the ground that smelled like urine. Perhaps that’s more authentic.

We cruised by that little Nazareth village. The period place. I feel like you can either really hit or really miss with those types of things, and this was pretty cool. They had a excavated a bunch of foundations and rebuilt/replicated some of the old buildings. One of the coolest things we saw was a wine press, carved into the rock. Regrettably, we don’t have a picture, but it was pretty cool to see how they did in the old days, quite ingenious really. They had also replicated the olive oil process. They used ass power to crush the olives:

The next we ventured into Haifa to check out the Baha'I Gardens. They’ve got this huge shrine there with these immaculate gardens terraced into the side of this big hill. I don’t know much about the religion, but they have great gardeners. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really go all the way into the gardens, we had to stay outside the gates. But here they are looking down.

Me practicing my smooth moves and sweet lines… it worked.

Then we headed to Akko, the site of the last Jewish resistance against the British mandate. It was cool, we got to tour the old crusader city and see some old dungeons and secret tunnels: