November 10, 2019
The goal for today’s adventures included going to the northern part of Israel to visit Mt. Tabor, Nazareth, and Capernaum.
The morning started off easy with prayer, shower, breakfast, and heading out the door at 9AM.
Unlike the day before, today was slower-paced.
Summarizing the entire road trip, we made some wrong turns and drove through some dusty Arab and Muslim towns. With it being Sunday, a normal workday for most in Israel, traffic and such was not an issue.
Mt. Tabor
From the Gospels, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up Mt. Tabor and revealed Himself in a glorious way in the Transfiguration. The Church of the Transfiguration atop Mt. Tabor now commemorates that particular moment.
Since we road trip’d here, we could drive our car up Mt. Tabor. It’s a bit of a scary drive because there’s a section of the mountain with many switchbacks on a steeper side of the mountain, and sometimes it looks like you’re going to easily fall off the edge. We had no problems though.
Once atop the Mt. Tabor, we slowly made our way to the front of the church. Lots of picturesque things to look at. We even checked out the lookout off to the side for a really great view.
Inside the church, we stopped and prayed for a little while. Some group was having a Spanish Mass in the main part of the church.
Off to either side of the main church are two little chapels dedicated to Elisha and Moses, who were also present at the Transfiguration.
On our way out from Mt. Tabor, we stopped at the on-site gift shop. I wasn’t intrigued by their offerings, but the gift shop also sells coffee.
After Mt. Tabor, we headed on our way to…
Nazareth
We arrived in Nazareth around lunch time. Therefore the first priority was to go grab some lunch. TJ recommended getting some sort of shawarma, and we settled on going to a place just down the street from the Church of the Annunciation.
Church of the Annunciation
After lunch, we made our way to the Church of the Annunciation. This is the church built over the place where the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she will conceive Jesus, and she gave her fiat or “yes”. The current structure of the church is actually built over the ruins of the old church.
Our timing must’ve been quite right because when we entered the church, hardly anyone else was in the main space. Besides TJ and me, there must have been 2-3 others. In other words—no tour groups or pilgrim groups!
The result of not having people in the church is having a sense of peace and quiet—a stark contrast to yesterday’s visit to Bethlehem’s and Jerusalem’s holy sites.
Perhaps largely due to this time of peace and quiet, I really felt the profoundness of the site and what transpired here.
On the altar in the grotto (deep in the background of above pic) that marks the exact spot are words in Latin that say “The Word was made flesh here”. I contemplated this, and wow…I’m still shook by how awesome that is!
After praying in the main space, we went upstairs where there’s another space set up as a church, and a Korean Mass was going on.
We spent a little bit of time up here because Mass was going on, and to appreciate some of the paintings or mosaics of Mary on the walls.
The other cool aspect about the Church of the Annunciation are all the icons, paintings, and mosaics of Mary donated by different countries all over the complex. It’s really cool to see Mary depicted in different cultural expressions.
Church of St. Joseph
Next door to the Church of the Annunciation is St. Joseph’s church. This is where his house was, and likely where Jesus grew up in His formative years not talked about in the Bible. Underneath the church are ruins of what would have been St. Joseph’s workshop.
TJ and I did hang around for a moment in the church because there was an English Mass going on for a tour group. The priest was giving his homily, and we wanted to listen for a bit.
After visiting this church, we headed back to our car with a pit stop to grab some Arabic sweets and coffee.
Then we jetted off to…
Capernaum / Sea of Galilee
Not too far from Nazareth is the Sea of Galilee. The goal was to get to Capernaum before it closed and perhaps even catch the sunset.
Capernaum is known as the town of Jesus because of how much time He spent there. In the Gospels, it is mentioned how He often preached at the synagogue there.
The town is also where St. Peter is from! The main church in Capernaum is built right over St. Peter’s house.
When we first arrived, we pretty much headed straight towards the seafront because the sunset was quite lovely. We spent a while here taking pictures and enjoying the sunset.
On our way back to the car (it was near closing time), we spent some time looking at the ruins of St. Peter’s house and the synagogue.
Once finished, we made a last minute decision to try and see the nearby waterfall because TJ wanted to show it to me. Because it was getting dark, we didn’t actually go down to the level where you could see the waterfall, but rather at the top where you can only hear it, not see it, due to vegetation covering the area.
After the waterfall, we made another last minute decision to try and visit the Church of the Primacy of Peter, which was basically “next door” to the waterfall. Unfortunately, we arrived within a few minutes of it closing, and the Franciscan friars were already pushing everyone towards the gate.
Ah well.
Ending the Day
We drive the 2 hours back to TJ’s house. We stopped by a local pharmacy so that I could pick up some contact lens solution since I forgot to pack mine…
Then we grabbed dinner at an Asian fusion restaurant, and it was delicious.
Current Stats
Total Cost So Far = $443.93
We shared costs for lunch and dinner with my contributions at ~$7 and ~$34 respectively.
The contact lens solution cost me $10. For a 100 mL bottle??? Crazy! But…necessary…because I’m not usually a daily eyeglass wearer.
Lessons Learned
We used the Waze app to navigate to all these places. I guess Waze is pretty good at evading traffic if you set it prioritize avoiding traffic. However, there were a few times where we second guessed the directions Waze was giving us resulting in some wrong turns.
These holy sites do have hours, and it’s important to double check the times at which they close. Most seem to close around 5PM or so.
Same goes with Mass times. We had talked about maybe going to Mass this day, being Sunday, but thankfully we had gone yesterday to a Vigil Mass in Jerusalem. The nice thing about holy sites, especially ones that see a lot of tour groups…someone is bound to have a priest who says Mass for their group.
I don’t sweat forgetting to pack general toiletries—these are usually easy to pick up wherever I’m traveling to.
Navigate to other days:
- Day 0: Preparations and Initial Thoughts
- Day 1: Going MAD
- Day 2: Subway Struggling in Madrid
- Prev> Day 3: The Fastest and the Slowest
- Next> Day 5: A Day At the Beach
- Day 6: Avoiding Missiles and Apollonia
- Day 7: Let’s Avoid More Missiles Today
- Day 8: One Last Time Before Leaving
- Day 9: A Fly Way To End It
JR is a full-time engineer working in the aerospace industry. Apart from having such a fly job, he flies unto the arms of Our Lady and the Church pursuing his faith and a relationship with Christ. Over the past several years, faith and flying via pilgrimages became a thing. When he’s not being fly, JR hangs out with family, friends, his chihuahua, and with thoughts of the next trip.