It’s a Small World

“How long can we stay in this dump?” Heath asked from the kitchen, where he was trying to creatively fry the terrible cheese left over from last night’s fail. Nothing he tried worked, the cheese remained inedible. After an excellent night on our platform and waking up to beautiful sunshine on the Sea, our spirits were back in their proper spots. High. We laughed til we almost cried as we ate our eggs and wrote imaginary reviews about the place. It truly was dirty. Like the sheets and bathroom were clean, but that’s where the cleaning lady’s steam ran out. But we made good use of it all, and it was rather late before we pulled out.

We spent the day at the Beirut, Lebanon airport. Or so our GPS said. According to the Internet, (so it must be true) the IDF is scrambling GPS signals to confound Hezbollah. It’s certainly confounding us! No matter what we punch into Navigation, it kindly shows us the best route from Beirut. You can’t even just drive and watch the little dot to see where you are, cause the little dot is firmly ensconced in the airport at Beruit. It hasn’t been a problem till today, but we’re up North now, close enough to the war zone to hear the jets almost constantly. Just a distant background noise. We thought Waze was a ridiculous app, leading us down paths that are certainly mere cow trails, but now we kinda miss it.

In reality, we officially started the day on Mt Tabor. We haven’t been up it much, and were under the impression that it really only had barf in the parking lot and the Church of Transfiguration on top. The barf is because the road leading up is steep, has lots of switchbacks, and on a normal day it’s full of crazy taxi drivers, absolutely flying up and down it. Buses can’t go up. The taxis ride your bumper if you are driving even at all moderate, and it’s just plain hectic and disturbing. Obviously hectic and disturbing for lots of stomachs too. But this time? No traffic. Just us and our little Kia, howling its way up the hill. I feel like I say it in every post, but it’s so lush and green here I can hardly believe it! Apparently they’re having a hundred year rain, and it’s truly amazing. And muddy. You would blush to wear our shoes. The hillside was a carpet of wildflowers. Masses of cyclamen, poppies, hyacinths, wild garlic and hundreds more. Cows were grazing and skidding on the steep slopes and the sun shone brilliantly.

The church was closed up there, which was good, cause it caused us to swivel our heads around and behold! A hiking trail. We trotted off, following a well marked trail and then began a discovery frolic that was delightful. We followed lesser marked trails to old ruins and caves, climbed around on an ancient entry arch by more ruins, dodged cow pies and serious bogs, took a groupie for the other hikers that materialized, gazed across the Galilee farmland and in general spent way more time than we had planned there.

Next stop was Cana, where we circled and circled around, trying to find the ancient spot. Nothing doing. The inevitable church was closed, the surprised guys at the top of the hill said we weren’t anywhere near the right spot and the “right spot” looked like a dump. Scratch that, we said. But Cana yielded up a delicious bakery for lunch where we ate piping hot olive and cheese pizzas cooked in a big brick oven, and watched with interest as they cooked large, paper thin bread called Saj over a domed cooker. They let Heath slap one on, and well, perhaps he needs a little practice. But that was fine if it wasn’t quite perfect cause then we could eat that one.

Our room tonight is in Akko. It’s in an ancient restored building right in the heart of the Old City, and it’s far from a dump. It’s totally cool. The arched doorway in is so low you have to duck. Our host met us at a roundabout outside the walls, since we clearly had no navigation. The sun was going down in the most beautiful show I had ever seen in my life. I was speechless with the beauty of it. Out in the Med, a battleship went back and forth, patrolling the waters. It was stunning to see it silhouetted perfectly against the sun. A shocking juxtaposition of Gods beauty and man’s fall. When the sun had sunk, we let our Host lead us down the winding streets to our home, where he welcomed us with hot sweet tea. Perfectly delightful.

We wandered around til we found a good looking shawarma shop for supper and ate our food while the prayer call rang out from half a dozen mosques. Cats are everywhere. Fighting, meowing, sleeping or just watching with silent eyes. Old City was mostly closed for the night, so we didn’t linger long before heading back to home and bed.