There are three main Youth Hostels in Nazareth, and they are all very close to each other in Nazareth’s old city.

I stayed here for 1st night, this is the ground floor of a local chap’s house, who happens to be the local policeman, and jolly nice gent he is.   The local station is also quite close by too.

Here I only spotted one other traveler, an Italian called Michael who was very friendly and shared with me half his plate of bread, cheese and olives, and spoke little English.   This place provided free tea and coffee and a shared kitchen, and I have started to become quite fond of Arabic style coffee.

When I was about to leave I spotted some interesting pets crawling around the front yard!  Good job I didn’t head out to the loo too early on the morning as I might of trod on them!

The second and third night I stayed in the Al Atabeh guest house.   This had a quite good sized open court yard, with plenty of outside seating.   This was slightly cheaper, with a large dorm room with bunks for about 10 people.   There is a bar where some food can be ordered but no shared kitchen.

As the other picture shows there was a decent bit of rain here, and in this lounge the roof started to leak with water running down the walls, above the coloured drapes the ceiling is only a flimsy corrugated plastic job.   Leaking roofs are quite a bit problem in Israel, as a lot of them are flat and in not so good condition, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise.

I didn’t like that the showers are awful even by middle east standards, water just goes out under the door into the yard, there was nowhere to hang up your clothes whilst inside to keep them dry and clean, and the lights mysteriously turned off halfway through, this meant I had to wrap a towel around me and get it out and press the light switch, but it wasn’t someone playing pranks, it was just broken, probably wet had got inside the electrics.    I also didn’t like overly political stickers inside the bathrooms.

The last hostel above and left is the Fauzi Azar is by far the best, unfortunately I could not get a bed here as it was full.   I did however take advantage of breakfast and two hour tour of the city for 35 Shekels which was terrific!   This grand old house is beautiful and well kept.  It has been voted the best youth hostel in Israel, and its not hard to see why.

Check out:-

www.abusaeedhostel.com

www.alatabeh.com

www.fauziazarinn.com

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica