July 9, 2007

We woke up and headed out to the front desk to find out where the complimentary breakfast they promised us was. We were taken over to the other side of the lounge area where there was a small kitchen. Coffee and tea were, of course, offered and declined. Breakfast ended up consisting of cocoa and toast. Very reminiscent of breakfasts of my youth.

Our Galilee touring started. Getting to the sites around the Sea of Galilee isn't too hard. You just drive around the lake and look for signs pointing you to the next tourist attraction. It took awhile to figure out exactly where the Ginosaur Boat was housed. We found the parking complex, but ended up in a hotel (where we checked out the rates, of course) and wandering around a parking lot until we finally found the museum. Pictures were fun here. It was just dark enough that Travis had to use the tripod and long exposures to get really cool pictures. As we left, I made my customary peek into the ice cream freezer to see if there were any coconut Nok-Outs and ... sure enough, they had some! I started getting all giddy inside, but tried to suppress it. I mean, I felt slightly guilty that Travis was paying for everything. However, Travis saw the look in my eye and, being the good brother that he is, bought us each one. The thrill of this treat dims the other sites from my memory. I believe there were sites like where the Feed My Sheep sermon was given... but I honestly don't remember every place we hit that day. (And apparently my note taking skills slacked off)

Around 1:30 we decided we were really hungry and started driving around trying to find a place to eat. We followed a main road that took us away from the Sea of Galilee, but still looked promising. After awhile, we found a strip mall with one section labeled ברגר ארצ (except with a zadik sophit for anyone who cares... I just can't figure out how to do those on my computer) or, in English, Burger Land. This sounded promising. (Though, the butcher shop of the day before was still heavy in my memory.) Sure enough, this was a food court! Travis and I, wanting to fully immerse ourselves in the culture we were in decided to be bold and daring and get... no, not McDonalds... Chinese! Mmm... so good. We're such good tourists.

As we headed back to Tiberias, Travis spotted a spot we could pull off with lots of trees. Oh sure, there may have been a wee bit of off-roading, and sure the contract he signed saying he was responsible for any under-carraige damage kept running through my mind (and every once in awhile off my tongue). But we ended up in a nice little grove of trees which Travis deemed perfect for a Sermon on the Mount picture. I probably would have agreed had the wind not decided to come clear from Idaho to find us. Since Travis was our only male model, he had been teaching me how to take pictures with his 4x5 camera. So I'm sitting there with his dark cloth over my head, trying to hold it in place around my camera and my head, w/o disturbing the camera, and making sure the focus landed in the right place in the picture... the best being that the image you can see in the camera is upside down and backwards. So I had to actually think about where the focus should be, all the while fighting the flipping-flapping cloth around my head. Great fun. Pretty sure I double exposed a negative here as well. Oopsies!

Once again, we were on our way... but then, when you drive around a large lake, and it's nearing sunset, and there's places to pull off (even if it does try to eat the under carriage of your rented car) ... how do you keep driving? So of course we didn't. We pulled over and tried different ideas for a Walking on Water picture. Then Travis gave in to his love for scenic photography and photographed the sunset over the Sea of Galilee. Soooo pretty. While he set up all that jazz, I started gathering dirt for our dirt collection. (I don't think this has been mentioned previously because we were gathering it for Mom's Christmas present and couldn't spoil it. But all the major places we went to, we gathered a ziploc bag of soil/dirt/sand to bring home to layer in a jar.) Then I just sat there and watched the waves crash in on the shore. It being a windy day, the waves were quite fantastic. They got up to maybe 3 feet tall. Which is the tallest I've ever seen crashing waves. Watching them thrilled me. I was so mesmerized. It was just so... beautiful. Travis found it entertaining that I was so taken by these apparently itty bitty waves and told me that I really need to get out to the ocean sometime. I agree. Trip to California this summer anyone? I mean, really, I want to sit on a deserted beach with someone I care about and watch a sunset with gigantic waves crashing in around us. Doesn't that just sound romantic? :) I think there are just some scenarios that Anne Shirley herself would swoon over. The feeling is just overwhelming, even just in my imagination.

Ok... snapping back to reality.

For dinner, we drove around until we saw a Burger Ranch. It seemed safe enough. We laughed at the Garfield display for the kids toys. It was all translated into Hebrew, except the Christmas present (yes, in July) that was scanned in backwards, so the cursive writing on the tag was backwards and thus looked nothing like English, so it didn't get translated into Hebrew. Hahaha. A couple of burgers later, it was back to the crazy hostel where we had to pay for parking and climb Everest to get to our rooms. While Travis took a shower, I started planning for the next day. We had exhausted most of the easy to find sights around the lake, so we'd have to be more structured so we could get all the sites further away from the lake.

During our nightly Harry Potter bedtime story, we moved pictures from Travis' camera over to my computer so that we wouldn't run out of room on the camera the next day, then we drifted off to happy oblivion also known as sleep.