MSIMJ excursions: Israel Trip - Day 2 Ceasarea, Haifa, Nazareth

The first stop on our tour was Caesarea. Here we saw the ruins of a Roman theater and a palace that was built out into the Mediterranean Sea.

Pontius Pilate had his own private seat at this theater. This is a piece of the seat that was found during excavations.

Some of the beautiful flowers in the area.

An ancient sarcophagus.

A friendly lizard enjoying the sunshine.

An aqueduct that the Romans used to bring water to the city.

Our next stop was the city of Haifa. Our guide, Reuven, lives here. The city is the 3rd largest in Israel. The city is built partly on Mt. Carmel. We drove to a beautiful overlook near the college. The manicured gardens were a site to see. From the overlook, we could see the large port in Haifa.

We went to the site of the Mt. Carmel showdown spoken of in 1 Kings 18 where the prophet Elijah called fire down upon the alter and proved the prophets of Baal wrong.

We ate a traditional Israeli lunch at a local restaurant. The choices were falafel or chicken schnitzel and then all the "salad" you wanted. As you'll see in the following pictures, we quickly learned "salad" was not what we were expecting it to be. Any kind of vegetable seems to be called salad. Most of the things on the table are cold roasted vegetables or cabbages with different seasonings. There's also a variety of pickled vegetables, olives, and always hummus and pita bread. Neither Michael or I were impressed with the food. We were also shocked to see how unsanitary everything is. It's nothing to see people walk up to the table and use their fingers to pick up the food they want. Sometimes they even put it back and get a different piece. Gross! We were glad we had packed plenty of "American snacks"!

Our next stop was at Tel Megiddo, the future site of the final battle, Armageddon, spoken of in the Bible in Revelation 16. Excavations in this area have proved it was inhabited as early as 7000 BC. Several important historical battles took place here primarily because of it's strategic location along the main route connecting Egypt and Assyria.

Guess you could say it's HOT here! Temperatures were over 100 degrees!

After leaving Tel Megiddo, we continued on to Nazareth where Mary lived when she was met by the angel Gabriel and where Jesus lived when he was a young child. The next few pictures where taken in the church of St. Gabriel which is built on the site of a well that is believed to be a place Jesus would have visited often as a child. This is just one of many "biblical sites" in the area that are simply based on tradition.