Black Sea Cruise Holy Land 2008

After our ship docked in Haifa, our bus basically followed the footsteps of Jesus from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and beyond.
The sleepy village of Nazareth 2000 years ago is now
wall-to-wall buildings with clogged traffic. We drove through the
Valley of Cana (where Jesus performed the miracle of changing
water into wine) and noted that road signs are in Arabic and
Hebrew.
Before lunch at a Kibbutz, we visited the Church of the Beatitudes where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount.. Then we stopped at the Loaves and Fishes Church on the rocky shore of the Galilee where Jesus shared a few loaves and fishes with a very large crowd.
Hundreds of supplicants were being baptized in the Jordan River at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee where we observed 2 Eastern Orthodox Priests standing at the top of a concrete ramp which sloped into the green water. Some people were clothed in white garments, women wore scarves over their heads and others just wore their daily clothes.
This fertile land produced groves of olives, figs, dates and bananas.