A Weekend in the North

I seem to always be about a week behind on these things. Last weekend, I went on a trip to Nazareth. My coworker, Peter, and I went to stay with a friend, Miriam, who had been volunteering in Nazareth. Miriam volunteered at Nazareth village, which is a mock 1st century village in the middle of the city of Nazareth. It attempts to show what it would have been like when Jesus lived there. The first day we were there, we went to Nazareth village. We first embarked on a tour that Miriam was leading. After lunch, there were a couple more tours, one of which Miriam was leading. Because she had the "in", I was able to dress up as a character for the tourists that were coming through. It was fun, I kind of felt like I was in a church play again. Although the props were way more extensive!

After our fun at Nazareth village, we went to the Basilica of Annunciation. It is an absolutely beautiful church. It is said to be the place where Mary received the message from Gabriele that she was going to have Jesus. Around the courtyard of the church, are numerous mosaics created by different countries throughout the world. Each country was asked to send a piece of artwork meant to represent the virgin Mary. I love seeing many different countries coming together in one place (even if it is just artwork)!

That night, we went to see an extremely good Oud player in Nazareth, named Wisam Gibran. The Oud is an instrument, sort of like a guitar, but shorter and with a big round belly (if that's what you call it). It is a typical instrument used to play Arabic music. Earlier in my trip here, I learned that they even use completely different scales to play Arabic music!

The next day, we ventured to Akko. Akko is a city on the Mediterranean Sea. We spent the day roaming through an underground Crusader castle, an old Turkish bathhouse turned into a museum, walked through Templar tunnels, and through the souq (market) of the old city of Akko. We looked out over the huge crashing waves of the Mediterranean Sea from the Old City walls of Akko. We ended the day with a feast of fresh fish and calamari, that we had cooked for us. We ate it right off the bone on a pier overlooking the Sea. It was probably the best fish I've ever had.

The next day, we came on home from a lovely weekend exploring different parts of Israel, since I have mostly been traveling in the West Bank up until this point.