Eight days in northern Israel: the quiet half of the country, and the best cooking in it

Two rows of low stone houses with tiled roofs and German inscriptions over the doors, built from 1868 by the Templer Society, a Protestant group from Wurttemberg who came to farm and stayed to build. The ground floors are restaurants now and it is the one part of Haifa that fills up in the evening.

Nineteen terraces climbing the mountain in a single line, with a gold domed shrine at the centre. Entry is free; take a taxi or bus to the top gate on Yefe Nof Street for the view down over the terraces to the bay. Walking through them from top to bottom needs the free guided tour, which runs once a day.

The colony has the view and the visitors; the lanes of Wadi Nisnas ten minutes west have the hummus, the knafeh and the prices people here actually pay.

A complex of vaulted halls under the Ottoman citadel, built by the Knights Hospitaller in the twelfth century and buried when the town above was rebuilt. The refectory with its enormous columns is one of the great surviving Crusader interiors anywhere, and the circuit takes an hour with the audio guide.

The green domed mosque of 1781, built by Ahmed al-Jazzar, the Ottoman governor who rebuilt Akko's walls and held them against Napoleon in 1799. The courtyard is a calm rectangle of colonnades and palms and al-Jazzar is buried in the corner of it. Modest dress, and closed to visitors at prayer times.

The hummus places in the lanes under the clock tower have a national reputation and sell out by early afternoon. Otherwise the fish restaurants along the harbour wall take the catch off boats fifty metres away.

A stone tunnel the Templars cut from their fortress on the western shore to the port, about 350 metres long, lost for centuries and found again in 1994 when a resident complained about a blocked drain. Lit, low in places, and it comes out in the middle of the old town.

The largest church building in the region, finished in 1969 over the grotto that Catholic tradition holds was the house of Mary, with the remains of Byzantine and Crusader churches underneath it. The cloister and the upper church are hung with Madonnas donated by dozens of countries, each in its own national style, which is far more entertaining than it sounds.

The Greek Orthodox church, ten minutes uphill, is built over the spring that fed the village well, and the Orthodox tradition puts the Annunciation here rather than at the grotto, on the grounds that Mary would have been fetching water. Dark, incense heavy and usually empty.

Nazareth is where Galilean cooking is being taken seriously: mezze, stuffed vegetables, lamb with freekeh, and pastries afterwards. Several of the best places are in restored Ottoman houses in the lanes above the basilica, and they need booking at the weekend.

A spice shop and mill halfway up the market street, in a stone building with sacks to the ceiling, where the family will grind you a blend, explain what half the Galilee cooks with, and give you coffee whether or not you buy anything. Reached through a small door beside the shopfront.

The Franciscan church next to the basilica sits over a cluster of cellars, cisterns and grain pits cut into the rock, which tradition has always called Joseph's workshop and which are at any rate the remains of the village. Quieter than its enormous neighbour and much easier to picture.

Nazareth's own pastry: small pancakes folded around cheese or walnuts, fried and soaked in syrup. Best made to order in the afternoon at one of the sweet shops on the main street.

A grey stone Salesian church on the hill above the old town, built in the early twentieth century in a French Gothic style that has no business being here, with a terrace looking out over the Jezreel valley to Mount Tabor. Ring the bell at the school gate to get in.

A limestone cliff standing over the water, with a national park on top, caves and a ruined fortress in its face, and a path along the rim. Ten minutes from the car park gets you the view; the steep trail down the cliff to the village at the bottom takes an hour and needs proper shoes.

In the middle of modern Tiberias, behind a red canopy, lies Maimonides, the physician and philosopher who died in Egypt in 1204 and was brought here for burial. It is a place of pilgrimage rather than a monument, and it takes ten minutes.

Tilapia, grilled whole, with salads and hot bread, eaten at a table on the water. It is the one thing Tiberias does very well and every restaurant on the front does it.

The fishing village where Jesus is said to have based himself, excavated down to its basalt house walls, with an octagonal church suspended over the one identified as Peter's. Beside it stands a white limestone synagogue of the fourth or fifth century, built on the black basalt foundations of the one that was here before it.

A modest church over a fifth century mosaic floor of two fish and a basket of loaves, one of the best known images to survive from Byzantine Palestine. Down at the water a few minutes away, a small black basalt chapel sits on the rock where the disciples are said to have eaten breakfast with Jesus after the resurrection.

The kibbutzim along the shore run cafes and fish restaurants with gardens down to the water, and they are a better lunch than anything at the sites themselves.

An octagonal domed church built in the late 1930s on the slope above the lake, with a colonnade around it and formal gardens dropping away in front. The setting is the point: you look down over the whole northern shore and it is easy to see why somebody chose this hillside for the sermon.

A long, narrow fortress on a ridge below Mount Hermon, built in the 1220s by the Ayyubids to block a Crusader advance on Damascus, and later held by the Mamluks. It runs several hundred metres along the spine of the hill, with towers, a keep and a secret staircase, and the view down the valley is worth the drive on its own.

An extinct volcano on the eastern rim at eleven hundred metres, held as a Syrian position until 1967 and now a viewpoint with the old bunkers and trenches left open to walk through. From the top you look east across the demilitarised zone and west over the whole Hula valley. There is a coffee shop at the summit with the best pun in Israel on its sign.

A pool in a basalt canyon walled by hexagonal columns, formed as the lava cooled and cracked, reached by a forty minute walk down from the car park in the Yehudiya reserve. The water is cold and clear and swimming is the whole point. The reserve limits numbers, so book online in summer.

Seventeen hot springs come out of the ground here at about sixty degrees and have been bathed in since Roman times. The reason to stop is the synagogue beside them: a fourth century floor mosaic with the signs of the zodiac around a sun god in a chariot, and Hebrew and Greek inscriptions along the edge.

About two hours to the airport down the Jordan valley or the Route 6 toll road. Allow three hours before an international departure.