On the fifth day of our Holy Land Tour, we left the Northern District for Jerusalem en route the Modern City of Haifa, the Ancient City of Caesarea, and the Village of Eir Karem, our gateway to Jerusalem. For this trip, we went to see the Stella Maris Church on top of Mount Carmel. We…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Nazareth
Why Nazareth is important to Christian / Catholic pilgrims today? Nazareth is described in the Gospel of Luke as a town in Galilee and the hometown of Mary, mother of Jesus. Although it was not explicitly mentioned in the same Gospel that Joseph was from Nazareth, it can be inferred that it was also his…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Kanna / Cana
Kaf’r Kanna, popular in the modern version of the Scriptures as Cana is a small Galilean town in the Northern District of Israel. Christians and Catholic pilgrims and devotees associate this modern village of Cana as the site where Jesus turned water into wine. In the Christian tradition, this is the first miracle that Jesus…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Tabor Mountain
The fourth day is a continuation of the journeys of Jesus and the Apostles in North Israel. This time, there is a focus on the presence and role of Mary, Jesus’ mother in Jesus’s life and ministry. To reiterate, the sites that we visited on Day 4 were collectively part of Israel’s The Galilee Journeys…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Tiberias (Part 2 of 2)
The next stop was Capernaum – it’s another personal favorite. It has almost the same features of the Felix Romuliana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Zamzigrad region in Serbia, which I visited in 2018. And to date, Romuliana is one of my favorite UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Of course, Capernaum and Romuliana…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Tiberias (Part 1 of 2)
We were told that we would spend at least two hours in the Allenby (Palestine) – King Hussein (Jordan) border before finally having our passports stamped by the immigration officers and enter Palestine, the gateway to Israel via Jordan. By 10 AM, we already crossed the King Hussein Bridge and we were already lined up…
The end of the Jordan leg of the Holy Land Tour or the way to Canaan
Petra was very tiring but it was also really fantastic. We arrived back at Amman around 5:30 in the afternoon – too early for Dinner. Our guide asked us to take some rest or do some walking nearby. As soon as I got inside the hotel room, I immediately started packing my stuff for the…
Walk Like a Cosmopolitan Nabatean: Petra and Wadi Musa in Jordan
My very first encounter of Petra was based on the adventures of Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., a professor of archaeology, who in 1981 was tasked to locate the ark of the covenant. In 1989, his adventures continued as he traveled to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, leading to arguably the most stunning feature…
Mount Nebo in Jordan or Where Moses Had a Good View of the Promised Land
I am so grateful that I had this opportunity to follow the Bible trail via the Holy Land Tour that I and four other family members participated from 2 to 13 December 2022. We were part of a group of 49 individuals plus one tour leader from the Philippines. For most members, this was a…
My first Ati-Atihan Festival (January 2020)
Hala Bira literally means ‘dispense all means.’ Many times, it also means ‘blessings to us all’. It is an Aklanon phrase that is usually chanted during the Ati-atihan Festival in Kalibo, Aklan. Today’s the phrase is chanted almost all over the archipelago during festivals, parties, and other social gatherings. The last time I heard the phrase chanted live was in…
Tanghal Kultura 