"Jesus Day" and "Don't Watch TV"

It was the Jewish Israeli travel guide today who called it "Jesus Day". The tour director got talking about the media as we often do hence DON'T WATCH TV"
We are in Haifa - this was the morning view from our room window - it is a beautiful city and very tolerant of all religions. We have heard a couple times "Nothing nuclear here that we can talk about". Tel Aviv is a party city, gay-friendly, high salaried and tech place. Today we visited The Sea of Galilee, Nazareth, Church of the Annunciation, Magdala (home of Mary Magdalene), saw the place on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus served the 5,000 with 2 fish and 5 loaves.
Our Colony Hotel is in the German Colony area of Haifa settled in 1869 by Germans to be closer to the coming of Messiah. These same Germans were expelled in WWII because they were Jewish!

Started our day on the bus at 8am. Below is our boat ride on the Sea of Galilee with the Golan Heights in the background (great wine region). We had on and off rain but it seemed whenever we needed to be outside the sun came out. After all, it is the Holy Land.

The dark building is built over the home of Simon Peter. The more I hear the more I want to learn about so many things.

View of the tiny Jordan River entrance into Lake Galilee aka Sea of Galilee - really a small lake and smaller than Lake Minnetonka!

We visited a working kibbutz today - guided tour and very interesting but nothing like a kibbutz started out a little over 100 years ago. Listening to the guide it rather reminded me of the communes of the 1960s and they did not work so well either. The populations are down and few newcomers are entering. It is becoming more like a business.

We visited Nazareth where Jesus grew up - it is a large city and not as pretty as others we have seen but we did have a lovely group lunch at a restaurant called Diana with a well known chef. The group meals here have many appetizers served family style and this had meats served family style - lamb, chicken and meatball kabobs - great food.

This was a billboard in fron of the Church of the Annunciation - the place where the Angel Gabriel told single Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus. No comment on the billboard.

This is the exact spot in the church where Mary met Gabriel. The church is underground and a new building (Catholic) was built over it in 1967. They do not have regular services as there are few Catholics in Israel. It is open for special services for tourists and other groups.

Top and front of the new church.

I like the color blue and I liked the tone of this fast food restaurant.

At days end we are on the bus and we saw this beautiful rainbow - end to another great day.

The gossip: I got a sneaky shot of the "Facelift Lady" but really can't post it here but could send it in a private email. Our director has a great way of combatting bus seat fights - every day you rotate one seat back. He says there is no democracy on the bus - I love it as on other tours some people feel they have to return real early to always get the prime seat whatever that means!

Israel - There is much good and there is possibly some secret and some maybe not so good. As for us we have been treated as nicely as anywhere else we have travelled. Most of life here has to do with religions. An entire town may be Arab, another Jewish and the exception may be Haifa where supposedly all live intermingled in the same town. (Christian, Islam/Muslim, Jewish, and Bahai). Enough for today. I have lots to ponder in my journal which I write little notes into several times a day. Tomorrow we are off to Jerusalem with of course a few stops on the way. We are told Jerusalem will be a lot different - much more military and much more religious.