Western Galilee and Back to Jerusalem!

We went to 3 places on our Western Galilee field trip: Chorazin, Sepphoris, and Akko.

Chorazin is a town a few miles north of Capernaum. The Bible says that Jesus visited there. We visited ruins of an ancient synagogue. Here's me in the 'seat of Moses,' which is the chair that sermons were delivered from.

Sepphoris used to be the capital of Galilee. We saw lots of beautiful ancient mosaics here. That's saying something, because after this trip I'm totally a connoisseur of ancient mosaics. No pictures from here because it was too hot to pull out my camera. Possibly not the best day to wear a black shirt.

Our last stop, Akko, was a Crusader city. We visited a pretty cool Crusader fortress.

My favorite part about Akko was that it was where Napoleon was defeated when he tried to take over the Holy Land. Yay French history! There's a mosque in Akko that was built to commemorate Ahmad "the Butcher" Pasha, who led the Muslim forces against Napoleon. You can see the minaret of the mosque in the picture collage on the left.

The other cool thing about Akko was that it was right on the Mediterranean. 

The night after this field trip was our last in Galilee. We had to say goodbye to the lovely Sea of Galilee. I'll miss this beautiful view!

On the way back to Jerusalem, we stopped at a few sites along the way. BYU never let us waste time on this trip!

In Haifa, we stopped at the famous Baha'i gardens. Baha'i is a religion with about 7 million people in the world. Their founding prophet died here in Israel in the 1800s, and they built a beautiful shrine and garden in his memory. It seems like all religions think that there's something special about Israel, right? It reminded me of the Versailles gardens because they're so perfectly manicured. I loved it! If something reminds me of Versailles, there's a good chance I'll love it.

The golden dome is where the Baha'i prophet's tomb is. His name is The Bab. I like that.

We all liked the golden dome because by this point in the Galilee trip, we were really starting to miss the Dome of the Rock.

Haifa looks like such a cool city! It's built on terraces that slope down toward the Mediterranean.

There's a cemetery in Haifa where a few Mormon missionaries from the 1800s are buried. John Clark was a 23 year old BYU student, and Adolph Haag was a 27 year old husband and father. They both died of disease shortly after making the LONG trek to the Holy Land.

The last place we went to was, believe it or not, our FINAL ancient city of the trip. It's called Caesarea Maritima. Herod the Great built the city. It was the Roman capital of Judea. Paul was once imprisoned there. It was right on the Mediterranean, which makes seeing ruins very enjoyable. I enjoyed driving a chariot while I was there.

And now, you can enjoy a series of pictures called "Marissa and Friends at the Mediterranean." Pictures are from Akko and Caesarea.

Kelby

Kaitlyn and Lauren

Brianne

Kendall

Sierra

Well, that was my Galilee trip! Despite all of the crazy sightseeing and running around, it was actually a pretty peaceful and relaxing trip. I think the best part was looking out my window at the Sea of Galilee and thinking about the miracles that happened there.