Haifa, Israel - Day One

Sorry I am so late in posting this day.  We were kept very busy while in Israel and Bob will not give me the pictures until he edits them.  And that takes time.

It is now Saturday May 10th and we are docking in Haifa, Israel.  The pool does not open early when we dock early so no swimming today.

As this is our first stop in Israel, we need to go through face to face immigration.  This takes a little time so we are called by our deck and tour group.  Today we are doing a tour called "Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee".

When we went through immigration, they give you a landing card and stamp it.  It seems if you have an Israeli stamp on your passport, you cannot enter certain countries.  So they stamp the landing cards but you have to turn them in on the last day.

We drove to Nazareth and visited the Basilica of the Annunciation.  Next we walked to The Church of Joseph and finally walked along the Bazaar.

This is the Basilica of the Annunciation.  It was built on the site where the angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Another view of the church.

Statue of the Virgin Mary.

The door leading into the Church.

Inside the Church.

More of the Church.

They were saying Mass while we visited.

This is the rear of the Church.

And the Statue of St. Joseph.

Inside the Church of St. Joseph.  His workshop is downstairs, at least the remains.

The drive to the next area took us to the Sea of Galilee.  It really is a lake but is called a sea.  Lots of areas of banana trees, date trees, olive trees etc.  Here we were able to see the Goland Heights.

The Sea of Galilee with the Goland Heights on the far side.

Next we visited Yardenit and visited the baptismal site on the Jordan River.  While here there were many people getting baptized.  It is a complete dunking into the dirty river.

The river Jordan.  It was filled with very large cat fish.

The people don white covers and head to the water to be baptized.

We had a local lunch at a Kibitz.

After lunch we drove up to the Mt. of  Beatitudes.  We walked around for a while and then headed to Capernaum and visited this site.

This is the Church of the Beatitudes.  Now there is a convent and a school connected with the Church.

The inside of the small Church.

At the Primacy, many people stepped into the Sea of Galilee.

There is this small chapel at the Primacy.  This is where Peter became the Primate of the Church.

And this is the ruins of one of the first Temples.  The one where Jesus spoke.

The Church of Caphar.  This is the area where Andrew and Peter lived.

On the way back to the ship we drove to Mt. Carmel and had a wonderful view of Haifa.

The Gardens of Baha'l.  This is the highlight of Haifa.  This is a picture from the bottom.

And now we are at the top.  The gardens are closed to visitors.

The City of Haifa.

More of the City.  You can see our ship in the background.  The Oceania Riveria was also docked here.  Our ship is the small one on the right of the picture.

We arrived back at the ship at around 7 pm, cleaned up and headed for dinner in Compass Rose.

Then back to the suite and bed.  A full day with lots of walking.