Tyre and Cana

On Tuesday we made a day trip to Tyre on the Mediterranean Sea and the village of Cana (or Q'ana depending on what map you look at).  I love the history behind the city of Tyre and it's place in Biblical history, and if I haven't said it lately, I'm so thankful to live in a place with such incredible history.  That said, I"m not exactly going to go into any of that history because my overall ignorance would shine through, but enjoy looking through our pictures as we took a walk through ancient Roman civilization.

We started out at the site of the vast Roman hippodrome and necropolis, or city of the dead.  The necropolis contains literally hundreds of ancient burial chambers dating from Phoenician, Roman and Byzantine times.  There aren't a whole lot of rules at sites like this in Lebanon so the girls pretty much climbed all over everything...

(And yes, I know how much Abbey is changing and how grown up she looks, please don't remind me!!)

Mom loved the massive aloe plant that was growing in the middle of everything...

The hippodrome dates back to the 2nd century A.D., and part of the grandstand and the horse track remain intact.  It's pretty magnificent.  Unfortunately we didn't get many pictures of the hippodrome itself as there had just been a concert there and they were taking all that equipment down.  There are also the remains of an old Roman road lined by an aqueduct.  Also pretty amazing...

Allow me to chase a rabbit for a minute... When I was growing up, I was one of 7 cousins who all lived in the same city.  We celebrated holidays together, had frequent family dinners etc. etc.  Like most families, we took lots of pictures and our parents got a great kick out of piling all the grandkids around Grandaddy and taking pictures and then calling them "Grandaddy and his crazy grandchildren".  (I'm not really sure how Memommy managed to escape this...).  Let's face it, anytime you try to get 7 kids spanning from ages 1-11 to look at the camera at the same time and all look normal, well, it just doesn't work so well.  Anyway, all that to say, here is our modern day version of Grandaddy ( or in this case Da) and his crazy grandchildren.  (of course three of the crazies are missing from this pic so I'm sure there will be more to come in September when we are all in the same country...)

From Tyre, we went a little further south and inland to the village of Cana.  Even though there are several modern villages that claim to be the ancient village where Christ turned the water into wine at the wedding, it was still neat to visit a place where Jesus COULD have walked.  Even if this is not actually the place where His first miracle happened, I imagine that the landscape was very similar.   It's almost surreal to be in these little villages, see the rocky hillside and olive trees.  If you close your eyes for a minute, you can almost picture Jesus sitting on the hillside with a crowd around him...

On the edge of  rocky ridge, there is a lined walkway down to a cave where it is said that Jesus would go to pray.   There are also engravings along the way that are said to have been done by the apostles around 40 years after Jesus' death.  There are carvings of the ten commandments, the Last supper, the virgin Mary holding baby Jesus,  and several others.

This one is the last supper

Like I said, whether or not this is actually the place that many claim it is, it was still very picturesque and beautiful.   I love the idea that a place just like this would be where Jesus would withdraw from the crowds to pray..

Here is our tour guide trying to get Naomi to touch the water that drips from the top of the cave.  She wasn't too excited about the idea.

Sweet sisters..

What do you think?  Are they getting tired of all the pictures...

True to form, Abbey found a spot everywhere we went to escape with a favorite book.  By the end of the day she was on book number 2...

at the hippodrome

and later at the caves...