The Sea of Galilee - Redux: First Stop, Nazareth

Did you wonder where I've been? 

I've been beading. There's a holiday boutique at the end of next week for which I've signed up. That means having a supply of product ready to sell. I'm not quite there yet, but my hands feel the need to take a short break from the needle and thread.

My last post featured a very special birthday, which Betty, Doobie and I thoroughly enjoyed. The next morning the Road Scholar tour resumed full-force with visits to a number of well-known Christian sites.

The first stop, after a drive of about an hour, was the Arab town of Nazareth, where we visited the Church of the Annunciation.  

I found Nazareth to be charming, built on hillsides with the streets lined with merchants selling everything from trinkets to vegetables and fruits. I loved hearing  Arabic spoken, as I'd taken two years of the language in college, many, many years previously. All the remains of those two years are a few random phrases and the one sentence that I've never found useful:  "The teacher came, took roll and gave the lesson." Why I've remembered that so many years later I'll never figure out.

The church was beautiful, almost modern in appearance with its unusual "spire," although it dates back to Crusader and Bysantine times.

As we walked up to the entrance, I thought of another of my friends dating back to my college days:  Jenny, whose sons are named Matthew and Mark. As I was thinking of her, she was at home, at my house, caring for my precious animals.

Posted around the courtyard of the church is artwork donated by many countries. Most of them were truly lovely, a representation of the individual cultures.

Mexico

Poland

Czech

Most of these exhibits were truly beautiful. The only one lacking (in my opinion only) was the extremely contemporary exhibit provided by the United States, constructed from pieces of a space shuttle. I did not take a photo of this.

Inside the church, in a grotto on a lower level of the church is a site believed to be the original childhood home of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Mary's Grotto in the Church of the Annunciation,
Nazareth, said to be the location of the childhood home of Mary.

We took the opportunity to use the beautiful surroundings to take some personal photos.

New friends Linda and her daughter, Shelby, from Oregon.

I was there, too.

As we left the Church of the Annunciation, we got yet another lesson in the art of bus driving in Israel/Palestine. The narrow streets of Nazareth barely accommodated two-way traffic, let alone the huge tourist buses that seemed to be everywhere. As we waited half in the street for our bus, our expert driver, Mazen, skillfully threaded our bus around pedestrians, cars, brick walls and made a U-turn to pick us up. As he pulled up in a spot where buses weren't allowed, we scrambled aboard and headed out.