A Girl walks into a Bar

It sounds like the start of a (usually mediocre) joke, but it's actually the beginning of last weekend. I wanted to travel, but most of the kids on my program booked trips that included far too much time on overpriced buses, on someone else's time schedule, at spots where a local wouldn't be caught dead. So, I respectfully declined in order to save my sanity and resolved that I would rent a car and travel alone if I had to.

Instead, I met an Israeli girl named Flame (Shalhevit in Hebrew, which means Flame in English) while out with friends and by the end of our ten minute conversation we decided that we would head to Galilee together. As I have said to my Mama on many occasions, "Your baby knows how to make friends." It was a risky proposition, I admit. In fact, when Flame and her friend Billie picked me up at the hotel to start our adventure, the first question they asked was, "Why don't any of your friends want to travel with you? Is there something wrong with you that we should know about... ?" I wasn't quite sure how to respond.

We stopped in Nazareth for dinner, at this 120 year old Arabic home that had been restored and made into a restaurant. We dined on the patio, in the warm air and low lighting with a Muslim call to prayer in the background.


The next day, we found a quiet beach at Galilee and sunned and soaked most of the day. I kept trying to remind myself of the importance of this site -- the walking on water, the fish and the loaves, the baptism of Jesus -- but it still felt a bit like a lake, any lake, a regular lake -- except for these beautifully intricate white shells that littered the beach. The Galilee is lower than it's "ever" been at the moment, about 300 feet from the old shoreline, so lots of what was under is now uncovered.

Lunch was at an old kibbutz turned tourist trap. I was especially impressed that even this duck was wearing a yarmulke for the tourists.
And, they don't skimp when you order St. Peter's Fish.


On the way home, we got a bit lost, and it was the first time in Israel I have actually come in contact with what we see on CNN. I snapped this cave through the window on the drive, and understood how the Dead Sea Scrolls could have gone undiscovered for so long. Would you choose to go into a cave like that !?