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Published: August 12th 2010
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Apologies to everyone for the radio silence the last little while! Things have been crazy during the week, and I've been out of town the last two weekends. The weekend before last I visited hilariously tenuously linked "family friends" in Ashdod for the Shabbat, and had a wonderful, wonderful time. The Seters live on a moshav (self-contained farming community, formerly collectivized) just outside of the city of Ashdod, near the coast. It was ridiculously humid, but the company more than made up for it. There are no pictures though, I'm afraid - no photography on Shabbat!
This weekend I made a failed attempt to escape the unseasonably hot weather in Jerusalem (I feel justified in this - all anyone can talk about here is how unusually hot it is!), by going up north to the Galilee, to the town of Tiberias. Foolish me, I figured that north + lakeside + hills would = cooler... FALSE. With the heat index, it was above 40 everyday, and 46 on Saturday! Friday and Saturday were the kind of intense, all-encompassing dry heat that makes you feel like someone is attempting to fry you for dinner, and Sunday was a humid boil. I have
At Sunset
Greek Orthodox monastery in foreground. never been more grateful for a hotel room with air conditioning for siesta time!
Despite that, I managed to have a pretty good time, although I'm getting really tired of traveling by myself. On Friday I arrived in the afternoon, after taking the bus straight from Jerusalem. Getting to and from places has actually been one of the easiest parts of my trips - Israel's intercity bus transport is some of the best, most affordable, and regular I've ever encountered! After some initial problems with the hotels, I settled in and then went out (gingerly) to watch the sunset and eat dinner. I ended up having a collision between my desire to sit on a lakeside patio and eat delicious food and the damn heat - picture me sitting out, eating spaghetti bolognese (my Italian food cravings are off the chart here for some reason!) and sweating buckets from the lack of air conditioning and the effect of the hot food! The sunset was gorgeous though, and I took a long walk back afterward with a popsicle.
Saturday I got up early and took a cab to the other side of the lake to a ranch in the
Dinner Out
Sweaty but beautiful Golan Heights, where I went trail riding along the plateau with a group of Israeli tourists. The scenery was completely stunning, and despite being completely exposed to the sun it was actually cooler up there because of the wind. I include one picture of myself looking like a satisfied little fat French general, because we were going downhill when it was taken (you lean back on the horse), but you can't see that that's what's happening, and the result is unflattering but hilarious.
After that I made my way back to Tiberias with difficulty (my own mistake - assumed that the unreasonably expensive taxi would take me BACK as well; this was false), and after a lengthy siesta went down to the beach for a while. Most of the beaches around the town are owned by hotels, but there are a few cute little public pebble beaches still. I went to one near my hotel, and enjoyed the lovely, perfect-temperature water, though enjoyed the pretty raucous crowd a little less. After that I took a longer stroll through the town, had dinner in a cute little place, and then explored a few of the ruins from the Hellenistic period
Riding in the Golan
Tour guide, and behind her the Samakh Valley downtown.
I felt a little discouraged by Sunday morning and was about to pack it in and go back to Jerusalem when I found out that through the hotel desk I could get a really cheap private drive to several of the New Testament sites just down the coast of the lake. I eagerly arranged it, gobbled down the breakfast buffet (making sure to squirrel enough away to provide lunch too!) and then hopped in the fancy car for the drive.
First stop was a winding drive up one of the hills overlooking the sea*, above the ancient town of Capernaum. At the top was a beautiful garden, at the centre of which was a small church commemorating the site of the Sermon on the Mount - the Church of the Beatitudes. It is a stunning location, and the Italian order of nuns that takes care of the site has created an amazing, varied garden that gives an atmosphere that (I think) honours the site better than the church. My favourite was the series of shaded seating areas scattered through the garden. In each of them, groups were sitting together praying or listening to teaching (whether historical or
religious!), which was a lovely way to express the meaning of that commemoration.
After that we drove down the hill to Capernaum, which is a really well excavated little town. In the Gospels, Capernaum was the centre of Jesus' ministry and the hometown of many of the disciples. The New Testament records Jesus preaching in the synagogue, healing in its houses, as well as staying in the home of Simon Peter and also preaching from the boats of its fisherman just off the shore. I loved looking at the excavated homes, at the doorways and remains of staircases and the discernible patterns of courtyards and rooms, and picturing the town alive. It was also fantastic to see things from my studies so concretely. For example, in Mark 1, Jesus heals a madman in the synagogue, and then walks with the disciple's to Simon Peter's house. Now that I've been there, I know that that distance is only about 20 meters, and exactly what route they took. I got to walk it myself! And the seashore there is really calm and beautiful.
Finally (and I'll wrap this up because it's a novel now!), we stopped in at Kibbutz Ginnosaur
on the way back to Tiberias. Kibbutz Ginnosaur is where two fisherman found the 2000-year old boat in the mud, which was eventually and painstakingly excavated and installed at a purpose-built museum nearby. Also a very cool concrete encounter with history!
So now I'm back in Jerusalem, and in the middle of my last day at work at JCAN! I leave for London on Sunday, and cannot wait to be back there, with one of my favourite people Laurel. I also can't wait to be HOME.
I'll update from England if I can, and thanks to all of you for following along.
Love,
Jordan
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Devon
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Incredible pictures but what heat
Those pictures are gorgeous! I particularly like the ones of the Sea of Galilee through the palm trees. It looks like a very beautiful area, and the old city of Tiberias looks lovely. It must have been very neat to walk through the ruins at Capernaum and to see where things described in the gospels happened.