israel: tiberias and tabgha

i caught an early bus from nazareth to tiberias...i was able to check into my flat early, but it was quite a bit further from the city centre than i had thought...oh well...this flat was bigger than the flat in which i live in kyiv! (not that that is saying much)...
i took a bus to the city centre, where i waited for a while for another bus...i must've missed that bus, as i waited for more than 30 minutes, argh...eventually i found another bus to take me to a place called tabgha, or at least to the crossroads nearby...

tabgha is home to a benedictine monastery, it's beautiful...the name is the church of the loaves and fishes, this is supposed to be where the the miracle of the loaves and fishes took place...i don't know what the name of the area was before the miracle...many of the mosaics on the floor of the old church have been preserved; some are really impressive...
a little way down the road is the church of the primacy of st peter...it's beautiful, and small...the church is very close to the sea of gallilee, i took off my shoes and put my feet in the water :)
it took me a while to find the hiking trail up the hill, but eventually i did...at the top of the hill is the church of the beatitudes...unfortunately, it was closed, since it was new years day...too bad...

it was easy to catch a bus back to the centre of tiberias...i found a falafel stand for an early dinner, and had ice cream from another place...
after eating, i walked around...tiberias is not much more than a resort town on the shores of the sea of gallilee...it's filled with large hotels, and i think a couple spas...i walked along the promenade, which wasn't very impressive...
eventually it started to get dark, so i started walking back to my flat...