Cana, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor

On our third day in Jerusalem we planned to visit the city of Nazareth. Cana was on the way so we stopped there first. Cana is the city where Christ performed his first miracle by turning the water into wine at the wedding feast. Right off the main road through the city there are two churches that both claim to be on the spot where the wedding feast took place. They also both claim to have pots that held the water that was turned into wine. The first one seemed a little more believable. After walking in the main church we walked a couple flights of stairs down to ruins of the buildings from Christ's time. Those were pretty neat to see. And then, at the bottom they had a huge clay thing surrounded in a glass case. It didn't look anything like we expected. It was about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. The wall of it was several inches thick and the inside only went down about 2 of the 4 feet. It was pretty cool, but who knows if it was really the exact one.









Then the second one we went to had a bigger outdoor display for the two pots that they had. They were also very big, but they looked as new as a couple pots you could pick up today at a garden store. It was hard to imagine that those were really 2000 years old, especially after seeing the condition of the first pot. It was still fun to see them and the church that was built to celebrate that miracle.





Just about 15 minutes south of Cana was Nazareth. Nazareth was a little difficult to navigate, but after a few minutes of driving we found a parking spot that was pretty close to the sights we wanted to see. We started off with the first church that was built on the spot that they believed Mary found out she was going to be the mother of Christ. This church believed that the announcement took place in Mary's childhood home. Excavations showed what they believed her home was as well as several other ancient homes that must have been connected to hers. They built their church right on top of them, but then left it open on the outside to see the other homes and built it so Mary's home was right in the middle of the current church. On the inner wall of the church's courtyard there were mosaics of Mary that had been sent in from countries from all over the world. They were pretty cool and it was interesting to see Mary as being Japanese or African or Spanish ethnicity. The inside of the church as all closed so we just had to peak in the windows to see Mary's home, but we enjoyed walking around outside the building. Before we left we walked by the door to the church one more time and there was a lady there rushing a few people in. When we got in they were video recording something and the guy doing the recording angrily tried to rush us in to the center of the church for a ceremony. We stayed in the back to just get a view of the home, but it turned out that they were starting a marriage ceremony and only the wedding party was supposed to be in there. We left after a few minutes. We felt bad to interrupt everything as we were leaving, but luckily we were not down on the floor where the ceremony was taking place.









Then we went to the spot where they believe used to be Joseph's carpentry shop. Again, we had to go a few flights of stairs under ground to get to the ruins. And then to the spot where another church where some others believe Mary was told she would be the mother of Christ. These people believe it took place when she was out getting water by a spring, and so they built a church there. There were lots of people at this one and they were all touching and praying on the spot and washing rubbing the water on their faces.









After that, we just wandered through the city a little bit. One guy stopped me as we wandered around and he said that he had a cave (old city ruins) that we could see for free. I had seen a few people come out so I wasn't too worried that he was trying to trick me. I explored around a bit and it was pretty cool, but Rebecca didn't trust him so she just stayed by the door.

When we finished with Nazareth we wanted to make our way to Mount Tabor or the Mount of Transfiguration. We had printed off directions from Google Maps and we got about half way there. But then we had to go through a small village that had no street signs and we got completely lost. It was an Arab village and the streets seemed a lot scarier than everywhere else we had been so far. After about 20 minutes of driving into dead ends in this village we decided that there was no way we were going to be able to find it this way, so we turned around and tried the longer route just based on our maps.

We did find Mount Tabor and we were both really glad that we did. We originally planned to hike to the top, but after the bike ride the prior day we decided to just drive it. At the top it was very peaceful. There were just some hiking trails and we didn't see anyone else around. It looked like there was a monastery at the far side of the top, but there was plenty of room for us to just walk around and not be anywhere close to it. We did a picnic up there of pitas, fruit, and olives, read some scriptures, talked a little, and just enjoyed the peaceful break from the crowded noisy cities we had been traveling through.





Afterward we drove around the Sea of Galilee to stop at all of our bike ride stops (see last post) and then went back to our hotel. Even though it was Saturday we decided to observe the Sabbath according to the Jewish practices. That meant our Sabbath started at sun down on Friday and went to sun down on Saturday. So we just ate our dinner back at our hotel and got all packed up for our trip to Jordan the next day.