Le Douzième Jour, Samedi. (The twelfth day, Saturday 5/28)

 Honestly, the start of Saturday was a little bit boring. We went to yet another ancient synagogue. They really kind of are all the same. But the day improved greatly from that point on!

We went and saw the "Jesus Boat" which is a boat that was discovered completely buried in mud and totally preserved. It is basically a first century boat similar to the kind that Jesus would have been in for the calming of the sea and walking on water and all those Sea of Galilee stories. The short video in the museum that gives brief documentation of the excavation (which was a realllly elaborate process!) was really fun because the woman in charge of the excavation was so excited throughout the whole video. She was just bubbling with energy while telling the story.

Realllly bad quality haha

Next, we went to the Greek Orthodox site for the Mt. of Beatitudes. Now, it is quite likely that this wasn't the real site, but nevertheless it was beautiful there! They have this gorgeous cathedral and magnificent gardens and the views all around are just breathtaking. It was easy to picture Jesus in a place like that.  Granted, it wasn't groomed like that at the time. But still.

 Our next stop was.....some other cathedral. It also had beautiful artwork inside. Everything was so super ornate, and it just totally blew my mind. It also led to a conversation about what Jesus defeated with the cross and empty tomb (Because the empty tomb -not the cross- is the important part really, when we really think of what He defeated). It was not sin but rather death. One of the pictures in this second cathedral showed Jesus drawing forth Adam and Eve from the tomb, because He redeemed us from the death we inherited from them. That was a really cool realization we got from it.



Our final stop of the tour day was at Capernaum, a city that Jesus was in. The story of Jairus' daughter takes place in this city. We also saw the home of Peter. Which is AWESOME! It's unfortunately under some other modern structure, but you can still kind of see what's going on there. And I guess if things have gotten their reputation as a sight before the crusaders came through, then there's a good chance that it is the real site of what happened. If it wasn't until after the crusaders came through that we find a place getting famous, then it's probably a hoax.


After we got back to the hotel and grabbed a quick dinner, we headed back to the location of the museum where the Jesus boat was and grabbed a ride on our own Jesus boat! Well, ours was quite a bit bigger, since we had 80 people on it rather than 13, but still! We were on the only tourist boat owned by believers on the whole Sea of Galilee. The captain is also a musician and has been translating worship songs into Hebrew, so we got to sing the Hebrew versions of songs we've always known in English. That was pretty cool. Not to mention we were out on the Sea that Jesus was on. Looking all around, it was the same place! Talk about legit.

Our boat dropped us off in Tiberias, and we walked around for a bit. I got french fries and a McFlurry, and we grabbed the bus and headed back to the hotel.