Israel Days 1 and 2 continued

After spending our first morning in Meggido we headed to Nazareth.

This is the cathedral built at the supposed spot where the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would be the mother of Christ.  My only complaint about the whole trip is that the Catholics have built WAY too many cathedrals, one at every site where they think that anything may have happened in the life of Christ.  They are beautiful buildings, but once you have seen three or four of them you have really don't need to see any more.

This little fenced in area contains the actual cave where Mary was supposed to have lived. The only good thing is that they have actually kept the cave as it may have been 2000 years ago.  Unfortunately my camera did not take great pictures in the dim interior.

Countries from all over the world have donated mosaics, paintings or sculptures depicting the Mother and Child.

They had a tiny church over the cave that was supposedly Joseph's home right next to Mary's, but there wasn't much in it and I don't know where my pictures of it went.

Next we went to the supposed site in Cana where Jesus turned water into wine.  Again, it was a cathedral.

In the basement was a large stone jar which is supposedly one of the actual jars in which water was turned into wine. 

On day 2 we took a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee toward the Mount of Beatitudes and the ruins of Capurnum.

Here we are on the Sea of Galilee.  The mountains which you can barely see on the opposite shore are the Golan Heights.

This is the view of the city of Magdala.

Here we are on the Mount of Beatitudes.  Not what I had envisioned, but there were very pretty gardens and, of course, a cathedral

This is a baptismal font.

Here we supposedly have the exact spot where Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.  How they know that is beyond me.

More to come...

Israel Day 1

I was hoping to be able to do this while we were actually in Israel, but internet access was not what we'd hoped it would be.  I have hundreds of pictures, so I will post them by place.

The first place we visited was Har-Meggido, which is often mistranslated as Armegeddon.  Har means mountain, and I don't know if it was always a mountain or if it has just been built up so many times that it is now a mountain (and by mountain I mean hill).  Meggido was first built in 4000 B.C.  It was destroyed and rebuilt 22 times, the last time being in 400 A.D.  Here are some pictures of the ruined city.

This shot is looking out over the valley of Amegeddon.  It is a very fertile valley and has been a crossroads for thousands of years, and because of that it has been the scene of many wars.

This is a grain silo.  Instead of building them up, they dug huge pits and filled them with grain.  Being under ground kept the grain cool and prevented rotting.

This was the site of an ancient stable, and they have put a horse figure there to show where they were kept.

This is a trough in the stable.

All of these ancient cities have been built on top of previous cities because of their location near a water source.  This shaft and the tunnel below were excavated thousands of years ago so the people within the city could get to the spring even when the city was surrounded by enemies.  The spring was walled off and covered from the outside so that invading armies wouldn't have a water source.

This is the spring at the end of the tunnel.  More to come....

Philadelphia

It's taken me a little while to get this blogged.  Because of course, when you have a trip planned, win a trip, and have several other major expenses come up, the best thing that can happen is that your computer dies.  The desk top is dead and I am now trying to get used to the new lap top.  Anyway, now that the lap top is up and running, here are a few pictures.

Here we are at I-Hop on our first morning together.

After breakfast we headed over to the historic section of Philadelphia.  

We saw the Liberty Bell.

And this guy in the Visitor's Center.

We explored a cool old grave yard where Ben Franklin and several other Founding Fathers are buried.

Then we visited some of the other buildings in the area.

On day 2 we explored Valley Forge.  This was a really cool old chapel.

This is a monument to the only soldier buried at Valley Forge whose grave was actually marked.

Outside of the chapel.

Another cool monument at Valley Forge.

As pretty much everyone now knows, I won a trip to Israel a couple of days before we left for Valley Forge.  I knew that I was going to win this trip as soon as I qualified for it.  On the morning of the drawing I snapped this picture.  You can't really tell from the picture, but the rainbow ends right at my car.  As I took this picture I wished for a pot of gold, but if not I would take a trip to Israel.

This is the trail head to Baer Canyon.  Some idiot set the area on fire a few days ago.  I can't believe they were able to put it out before it spread any farther.

We were hiking up the canyon when I found Shady standing at attention just looking at this little bird.  I was so proud of her for not eating it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find it's nest and I'm sure it died or was eaten by something else.