I’m taking you back to last Saturday on our trip.  At least I think I am. 🙂

In the past, when I’ve been traveling on my own and blogging, it was much easier to keep my photos and my activities straight in my head.  And I could actually “write” a post in my head as I drove along in silence.  With this trip, not so much.  In fact not at all.  Okay enough of that whine.  It’s a real privilege to be here.

We started our day with a nice little boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.  We just moseyed across to catch our bus in a different location.  That’s Tiberias, where we are staying, on the hillside in the background.  And that’s my good friend Cathy with the cool sunglasses.

This is a scale replica of the kind of boats that the fishermen were using in the time of Jesus.  A boat like this features prominently in a number of Gospel stories.  Not very many years ago, when the level of the lake dropped dramatically, the remains of a nearly intact boat was discovered buried in the mud.  It was carbon dated to the time of Jesus.

We left Galilee to travel to the Mediterranean coast, to Caesarea.  Caesarea was an important city in the time of Jesus.  Mostly important to the Romans, but it was also the place where Paul left Palestine when he was arrested and taken to Rome for imprisonment.  Herod the Great built the city to be the main port and administrative center for the Roman Empire’s presence in northern Judea and Palestine.  He was considered ahead of his time in the methods he used to construct a protected harbor.  Much of those ruins are under water.  One of his accomplishments, with evidence even today, was the construction of a great aqua-duct.

Even though Caesarea is still a busy port city, most of what is interesting about it are the ruins from the Roman presence here.  The picture below has columns that are replicas, placed just to demonstrate the site of the old palace area.

Here’s our group sitting in the arena waiting to hear a short talk about the history we are going to see.  The arena is part ruins and part rehab so it is used for events.

The ruins of the floor of a coliseum.

Caesarea is a beautiful spot on the Mediterranean.  It must have been an impressive Roman city.

On to Nazareth.