Sometimes I think I’m a pretty bad tourist. Hell, I don’t even like to be a ‘tourist’ but sometimes, you just have to call it like you see it, and frankly, sometimes, I am a tourist. But, a bad one. I was supposed to go to Nazareth today, which was poor planning on my part anyway, because, well, I’m in Israel now, and…hello, can you say Shabbat? Sabbath? So, it makes it a little harder because the buses aren’t running.
A woman was going to give me a ride today to another town, where I could take a taxi to Nazareth. We finally arranged it so it would cost 120NIS roundtrip (which I guess is a pretty good deal on Shabbat, but still…we’re talking $25. So around the time that she was supposed to take me, she realized her car wasn’t working, which delayed us more, and soon it was about 1.30pm. Now, there is a choir concert tonight in Abuna Chacour’s church that I really want to go to at 6pm. But I will want a shower before then, and it will take about 1.5hrs driving time to and from Nazareth. So that would have given me about 2.5-3hrs to spend time in Nazareth. And I would have seen the Basilica of the Annunciation (believed to be built over Mary’s home) and gone to Nazareth Village (there is a nice little article on Nazareth Village by the Christian Broadcasting Network here), an extremely touristy location, which is a recreation of a first-century village and farm, to give you the feel of what it felt like to walk around in Jesus’ time.
So, I decided it just wasn’t worth it. I would have spent close to $40-50 to see all of this, and I couldn’t justify it for the short amount of time, especially. I have a hard time spending money to see some of the really touristy stuff. And, maybe I should be thinking about this from a pastoral perspective. If I had gone to Nazareth Village, I would have had a lot of photos that I could use in some sermon someday about the “Life and Times of Jesus” or something. I would have been able to say, “Yah…you bet I’ve been to Jesus’ hometown!” I don’t know. They would end up as about 30-40 digital images stuck in the photo gallery for this summer, which I may look at from time to time, but that would be it…
Am I missing something here about being a tourist? So does all of this make me a smart traveler? Or just a bad tourist?