After a slight early-morning SNAFU at the rental car place, we hit the road, heading north through the West Bank along the Jordan River. The further north we went, the greener and greener the scenery became. As we entered the Galilee, we were stopped at a checkpoint by Israeli soldiers, who searched our car (perhaps in part because Shiri forgot her passport). Having passed this test, we continued to our first destination--Bet She'an. Bet She'an is a VERY ancient city dating back to the fifth millennium BCE, which belonged variously to the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Israelites, the Assyrians, the Greeks (who re-named their city Scythopolis), the Hasmoneans, the Romans, the Byzantines, and now, to the State of Israel. Bet She'an is a national park which Shiri rightly described as an "ancient playground." Visitors are free to roam through the fascinating archaeological ruins of the city surrounding the tel (a "tel" is an artificial mound comprised of ruined cities that were built and destroyed on top of one another). A great many pictures are below.
1. Below is the Bet She'an tel and a view of the surrounding park from the top.
2. The park contains a perfectly-preserved Roman amphitheater.
3. Pictured here is the main street of the Roman city, Palladius Street. The roads themselves are crowned for drainage, and fragmented mosaics (also pictured) can be found alongside it.
3. The remains of an ancient bathhouse (the floor was laid top of these little "stools," and wood was burned underneath so that the sauna would be steamy).
4. A hodgepodge of other remains, some pictured below.
At this point, I was genuinely worried that we had peaked early--how could anything be cooler than an "ancient playground?" Soon, however, we found ourselves driving through the Jordan Valley. We followed the signs to Belvoir Castle, a Crusader fortress, but rather than paying to enter the museum, we used the spot as a lookout. Note the body of water on the left edge of the first picture--the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee.
We proceeded to Yardenit, the site on the Jordan River associated with the baptism of Jesus. There, we witnessed a number of pilgrimage-groups getting baptized (or perhaps, re-baptized), though sadly we did not hear any voices from heaven.
On the walls near the baptismal site, donor-groups dedicated tile mosaics recounting the story of Jesus' baptism in various languages (not unlike the Church of the Our Father). Particularly laughable (and borderline racist) was the passage rendered in Hawaiian Pidgin, below. Notice how "this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" became "You my boy! I really get love an aloha fo you, an I stay good inside cuz a you!"
Having been reborn in Christ or whatever, we proceeded on a clockwise drive around the Sea of Galilee, beginning in Tiberias. Our first stop was at a Kibbutz on the north-western corner of the Sea of Galilee, which housed an ancient Galilean boat from the 1st-2nd century CE. The boat was found preserved in clay on the bottom of the lake, but it was brought into a museum and meticulously restored. This is the style of boat in which Simon Peter would have fished, and alongside of which he and Jesus walked on water.
A number of important churches stand on the northern beaches of the Sea of Galilee, among them the Church of the Beatitudes, the Church of the Multiplication (i.e. the miracle of loaves and fishes), and the Church of the Primacy of Peter. All of these churches were already closed by the time we arrived on Thursday evening, but we returned to them the next morning (check out the forthcoming blog post for day 2). One church was open--the Greek Orthodox Church of the Seven Apostles. Not only was the church beautiful (inside and out, see pictures below), but a number of real live peacocks strutted around the church grounds.
Visitors to the church had access to a small, rocky beach, which afforded a spectacular view of the Sea of Galilee.
As we continued around the lake, sunset was fast approaching. Driving along the edge of the Golan Heights (Israel and Syria dispute for control over this region), I had a small mental breakdown in the car ("IT'S JUST TOO BEAUTIFUL, I HAVE TO PULL OVER!!"), so we stopped at another Kibbutz for more spectacular photographs. I parked Santi in a parking space meant for buses, which seemed a lot funnier at the time (we had had a lot of candy).
Having circumnavigated the entire lake, we returned to Tiberias for the night. Because it was already dark (not to mention the fact that we had had an incredibly busy day), we did not do much exploring; we did, however, stumble upon the remains of an old mosque (pictured below), which seemed spooky and overgrown in the moonlight. We enjoyed part of a free "sound and light show" (it ended prematurely due to mechanical problems) and then ate dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. We also met another traveler named Jocks (no, not Jacques), a medical student from the UK, who tactfully invited himself into our car the next morning.
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