It turns out that the Gai Beach Hotel in Tiberius is actually on a beach. When we arrived in the darkness the night before I didn't see anything like a large body of water. But outside the back of the hotel was none other than the Sea of Galilee.

The beach wasn't really much of a beach - no white sand or sunbathers to be found. And the sea is technically a lake. You can even see the other side! Where I live Lake Michigan is just a couple blocks away, and you can never see the other side, so calling this thing a sea felt archaic and a bit silly. Still, it was a nice surprise.

Sunrise on the Sea of Galilee

The view from the back of our hotel looked East, so we watched the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee.

We breakfasted (side note: I love this salty cheese they have called Tal Haemek) and set out on the bus for a circumnavigation of Galilee, starting with the Mount of Beatitudes. It was another Catholic installation, filled with beautiful gardens of both the stone and flower varieties. The grounds centered on an eight sided church - one side for each beatitude - that was, strangely enough, funded by Mussolini. It was also designed by the famous Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi. We would see several more examples of his work before the end of our trip.

We then went the farthest North we would venture during our stay: Tel Dan. It's a nature reserve that includes the headwaters of the Jordan River. Nearby we saw the triple border between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, along with the accompanying barb wire fences and graphical warnings about land mines.

Inside the park it was peaceful, the sound of rushing water never far away. Among the stone ruins was a replica of an ancient altar: a massive, prismatic, metal box. This is the type of structure where something like a golden calf would've been erected.

Tel Dan Sinkhole Sign

Inside Tel Dan there were some friendly warning signs. I don't actually know what a sinkhole "exit" is, but it sounds better than an entrance.

We traveled through the sparsely-populated-but-heavily-militarized Golan Heights to get to our next stop, Caesarea Philippi. While it was originally just called Caesarea like the city we visited the day before, the suffix was added to help differentiate it, and is in honor of its founder, Herod's son Philip.

The most remarkable thing about the city was the Greek Temple of Pan set inside a rocky cliff. There were ancient festivals here that included dancing baby goats in honor of their patron god. Let me repeat that. Dancing. Baby. Goats. I would've loved to have seen that. I imagine it would've looked something like this.

Caesarea Philippi Temple of Pan

A full view of the Temple of Pan. The cave to the left is where sacrifices would take place. The nooks in the wall would have small idols for the deities. One featured near the center was for the Greek goddess of vengeance, Nemesis.

Next up was the city of Capernaum. It's an old city with some fascinating archaeological finds to it, including an actual olive mill and press - not a replica like we had seen the day before - this was the real thing, thousands of years old.

Capernaum Synagogue

A synagogue in Capernaum. This is a great example of how so many things in Israel are layered. You can easily see the lighter stone right on top of the darker stone, probably from buildings built hundreds of years apart.

The structure that most dominated the skyline in Capernaum was the Byzantine-era church in the center of the town. It's one of the strangest churches I've ever seen: it looks like a flying saucer UFO just landed on top of all this ancient stone.

Capernaum Church

Seriously flying saucer.

We ended the day at the Jordan River, where some of the group got baptized. Despite how touristy it was, I thought one of the coolest things about the area was that a verse had been translated into nearly every language on the planet. And I don't just mean the common ones: I saw Gaelic and Icelandic, and hundreds more. If we ever need a modern version of the Rosetta Stone, this would be a great starting point.