8th April
NAZARETH AND GALILEE
Another early start at 7am for our coach ride to Nazareth first. Not quite such a long trip this time and once there our first stop was the Basilica of The Annunciation. I’ve never heard of this before but I didn’t like it at all. It was a modern, huge ugly church which is said to be the largest Christian church in the Middle East. It’s supposed to be built over the ruins of where Archangel Gabriel met the Virgin Mary. I didn’t listen much to the talk about it and wandered round the gardens outside. Our next stop was Galilee, 700 feet below sea level and known for the 2 fish and 5 loaves amount other things. After a huge lunch in a hotel on the banks of the Sea of Galilee was Capernaum where you could see ruins where Christ used to preach and the ruins of the house where St.Peter lived. As I was getting bored listening to our guide going into depth about St.Peter, myself and our friends wandered around and decided go and dip our hands in the Sea of Galilee ( just to say we’d done it!). Again you get a quite surreal feeling visiting the places you’ve heard of years ago at school which seemed a million miles away and certainly somewhere you’d never have thought you’d visit.
We then travelled up to the north of Galilee and stopped at where the River Jordan runs into the Sea of Galilee. Here, we were only 9 miles from the boarder of Syria! This place was very interesting and beautiful. You could see and watch people lining up to be baptised in the river with chanting and singing going on. You could also dip your feet and have a paddle if you wanted. Once again, a lot of different faiths were there, some meditating and some reading bibles.
I really enjoyed Galilee but not Nazareth. Our guide today was a lady who was obviously very informed and knowledgeable but she just did not stop talking the whole day. Even on the coach, from the moment we got on until the moment we got off she talked over the speaker system and she done my head in! Most of the others felt the same too which did spoil it a bit and that’s why we went off to do our own thing when we could.
Returned back to the ship at 5.30pm and set sail at 8pm.
The 2 days were very different and also not the type of tours we normally go on but I’m glad we did. I feel very privileged to have been able to visit these places and experience it all. The weather was hot but not unbearable and I was absolutely shattered afterwards!
Now it’s on to our very last stop of our trip around the world, Cadiz in Spain but first 4 days at sea to recover.