Nazareth, Israel (Cruise)

Upon exiting the ship, I was extremely at home with our tour guide who spoke English just like us - no accent. He was originally from Chicago, had come to Israel years ago to brush up on his Hebrew in plans of becoming a rabbi and ended up marrying, having children, and becoming a tour guide in Israel. I would recommend him any time. He had a detailed plan for the 2 days, yet was patient when the kids needed something, catered to our every need, and really was a class act.
Here he is explaining the carvings on the door from stories of the Bible. Notice how tired one child is and we've only begun!

First off we visited a site in Migdal called the Basilica of Annunciation where the cellar of Mary Magdalene is still in tact. If you look closely, there is a woman maintaining the walls inside.

Nations had donated wall sculptures and this is the one from the U.S.

Then we stopped at the Sea of Galilee where an ancient wooden boat (possibly dated back to Jesus' time) was recently found when waters receded during a drought in the 1980's. It is now on display at the Beit Yigal Allon Museum in Ginosar.
Sea of Galilee

This is the Roman Catholic chapel (below) built on the Mount of Beatitudes from Matthew 5. One wonderful added affect was the reading from the Bible that Jacob provided throughout the two days. Wherever we went, if there was a Bible story to go with it, he read to us as we pictured the story unfolding in our imaginations.
This seemed to be a regular thing...something pertinent happened in the Bible and years later, they built a church or chapel on those exact grounds. This was also the case in Jerusalem which really caught me off guard. I was expecting ruins everywhere, but these cities have been built, destroyed, and rebuilt so many times that now these reminders stand in place of where the events in Jesus' life happened. Jacob claimed we could be certain these were the exact locations of the events because from generation to generation people passed down the information to their offspring.
This is the outside of the chapel.

Next, we boarded a ship across the Sea of Galilee with a group of french speaking Christians singing praise songs and had our longest french conversation (mind you, we're not even in Belgium at this point!) to a sweet older lady who just adored our kids. Waiting on the other side was a lunch of St. Peter's Fish that I just had to get a picture of...usually I would have made my dad skin these things, but what do you do when they come highly recommended by the tour guide? I rolled up my sleeves and got a little dirty. It actually tasted very good!

The water was uncommonly calm this day.

My St. Peter's fish:

We drove by the area in Tabgha where the Multiplication Miracle of the Loaves and Fish happened (John 6). We, however, didn't get a picture of the hill where it occurred. We pressed on to a possible baptismal site on the Jordan River where John baptized Jesus (Mark 1:9-11, Matt. 3:3-17). This is where our son was baptized also. You might have read about this from our November posting, but I'll add a few pictures just in case.