Off the beaten track in Nazareth

updated 9:58 a.m. ET May 1, 2009

NAZARETH, Israel - When Pope Benedict XVI pays a visit next month to the town where Jesus grew up, he will bring brief attention to a Holy Land destination that is at once world famous and unjustly overlooked.

Like the tour groups bused into Nazareth for lightning visits on their way to somewhere else, the pope will see the Basilica of the Annunciation, on the site where Christian tradition says an angel told Mary she would bear the child of God.

Like most visitors, the pope likely won't have the chance to savor the shabby Ottoman chic of the Old City, consume too many of Abu Ashraf's honey-drenched pastries, or watch the young and hip show off their clothes and cars opposite the Dandana restaurant. It's safe to assume he will not experience the ear-spitting repertoire of Chaos, Israel's only Arab heavy metal band.

Benedict XVI arrives in Nazareth on May 14, and will celebrate Mass with thousands of worshippers on a nearby hillside.

He comes amid a modest but energetic renaissance here, one that has seen new restaurants opening up and signs of vitality in the neglected alleyways of the Old City. Those willing to go beyond the city's holy sites and shops hawking olive-wood crosses will discover the ideal place to experience Arab life in northern Israel and a base for exploring the rest of the Galilee.

A good place to start is the Fauzi Azar Inn, which opened four years ago in an abandoned mansion in the Old City after its 34-year-old founder, Maoz Inon, pressed his family and friends into service and cleaned out the pigeon droppings and rubble that had accrued there over decades of neglect.

Named for a former owner and referred to by those in the know simply as the Fauzi, the building has been restored to something of its former beauty. It is the kind of place where you can enjoy a leisurely breakfast of black coffee and pita covered in the local zaatar spice while a spiky-haired backpacker emerges bleary-eyed from one of the dorm rooms and shuffles off to brush her teeth. Overhead are flowers and cherubs painted on the ceiling by Lebanese craftsmen in the late 1800s.

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The Fauzi, where dorm beds go for $17 (72 ILS) and private rooms for $50 (213 ILS) per person, is useful as a base for touring the city and the surrounding countryside. A new hiking route, the Jesus Trail, leads trekkers from Nazareth to Kafr Kana, where Jesus is believed to have turned water into wine, and on to other holy sites.

If hiking through Galilee hills sounds too strenuous, simply ask directions through the bazaar to Abu Ashraf's place while discarding any attachment you may have to healthy eating. Abu Ashraf Abu Ahmad can be found pouring batter or laying out circular pastries called "kataif" on a table facing the street.

Don't bother asking how they're made: The recipe is so secret, Abu Ashraf claims, that even his wife has no idea what it is. An outsider can only observe him stuffing batter with nuts and soaking it all in honey. The result is as good as it sounds and will provide the sustenance necessary to keep cruising the bazaar.

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As you do, you might meet Hatem Mahroum, 30, who was Israel's welterweight boxing champion and has the immense hands and flat nose to prove it. He runs two shops here in the market and claims Nazareth's spinach is the best in the world. Or you might stop in at the Fahoum coffee store, where the smell of coffee beans and cardamom is overpowering and where the proprietor might subject you to a litany of complaints about how the city has neglected its old market in favor of the new Western-style shopping malls on the outskirts of town.

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