Cana and Nazareth Village

This week we spent a few days at Kibbutz HaSoleilim, where I worked on the stone from Khirbet Cana. My work in storage rooms reached new heights.

But only briefly, as it was way too hot to be in this thing after like 8:30 am. Generally we enjoyed the lovely weather; there was lots of outdoor dining on the picnic table outside of our room. Here we ate, among other things, giant pita and labneh with zaatar. This pita is so big that it can be worn as a skirt.

The crowded kibbutz pool was full of helpful signage.

The kibbutz is near Nazareth, so we spent yesterday there walking around downtown, briefly visiting the Church of the Annunciation, and touring Nazareth Village. L really liked the doors to the church; she keeps talking about how small Jesus is in these images. There were also lots of beautiful mosaics of Mary and Jesus by artists from countries all over the world.

And then we went to Nazareth Village. I have been using this as an example in classes for a few years but had never been there until yesterday. Basically, it is a faux Roman village from the time of Jesus with reenactors, animals, traditional crafts, etc. It was not as cheesy as I expected, which is something, but I have some complaints. For one, it was noon and hot, and there were only like 2 reenactors working plus a couple of goats and a donkey. For some reason we didn't get a tour of all the reconstructed buildings, which made me pretty annoyed as there were some pretty good installations, tools, etc. that I wanted to take pictures of. Our guide was ok, but honestly his inauthentic dress, Sprite bottle, and frequent text-messaging were all wrong.

Here is a member of our group with one of the reenactors on the watchtower.

This olive press was used pretty recently, as it still had olive chunks and delicious-smelling oil on it.
The reconstructed synagogue was really nice, and Lilah was all smiles in the relative coolness in there.

I sort of recommend this place. In cooler weather with more reenactors it would be better. The gift shop was full of great stuff but it was way expensive (which didn't deter me). We got little replica Roman lamps as souvenirs, and successfully burned one last night while watching Snow White for the millionth time.