Savannah in Israel and Jordan

One our last day in Dahab, (Feb 6)  we drove to the Israeli border and walked across, which I thought was really cool. We then went to our hotel in Eliat. After we settled in, Dad, Jack, and I went down to the seafront to check it out. There were mostly just stores. We saw some wild parakeets, which were really pretty.

The next morning we hung out until the afternoon, where we drove to the Jordanian border and crossed over. From there we found a driver that drove us first into a little bit of the Jordan desert before taking us to Petra. The desert there was really different from the Moroccan desert. There were a lot of amazing mountains, the ground was covered in little half dead plants, and there were a lot of big herds of camels owned by the Bedoin. We even went to Wadi Rum, which is the place where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. It is an area with a lot of beautiful rock formations.  The driver took us to our hotel right outside of Petra. We had to drive up in the mountains and then down again. Up in the mountains it was really cold. The guy driving kept saying “very high” “very cold” “what you think” “better than Egypt – no?” “very beautiful” then a few minutes would go by…… “very high” a few more, “very cold” and so on. Once he even woke Dad up to say “what you think?”

We got up early to go to see the ancient city of Petra. We walked through a big, long, narrow rock formation with swirls of different browns and a little red in it. At the end of that, there was the main part and most preserved part of Petra, Khazneh. It was amazing! It was all carved out of sandstone. After that we saw the smaller, less preserved tombs, the royal tombs, and a theatre. My favorite part of all of it was the Silk Tomb. The Silk Tomb is a small tomb that is part of the royal tombs, and the colours that are swirled around it were amazing! There was red, blue, yellow, pink, and white. Jackson and I collected a lot of colourful rocks, and on the way back we got to ride horses. Overall, Petra was beautiful and amazing.

First ruin we saw in Petra - amazing!

Close up of beautiful colors in the sandstone

Savannah & Paul leaving Petra

Horseback for the last part of Petra

            When we were walking home, we saw a place that sold some little glass bottles with pictures of camels and mountains in the dessert, made out of colored sand. The guy there even made one in front of us, which was really cool! I ended up getting a little bottle. There were also some really cool vases that were actually made out of the coloured sand from Petra mixed with glass, and they are mostly bluey greeny, but when you put a candle in them, they look yellowy orange!

Savannah in Jordanian head scarf

After Petra, the same taxi driver picked us up.  When we were driving back through the mountains,  we stopped a few times to look out and see all of the mountains and desert below.  The driver took us back to the border and then we crossed back over from Jordan to Israel.

We went back to the same hotel and the next morning, we took a five hour bus ride from Eilat to Jerusalem. When we got to Jerusalem we went to the Jaffa Gate, which is one of the gates that enter into the Old City. In the Old City we didn’t get very far before a guy came out of his shop and managed to sucker us in. He was very nice and got us drinks, and he showed us all of his jewelry. I got to try some green tea, but it had fresh sage in it, which was really good. When we left his shop, he showed us a good place for dinner, where they served shwarma.  

We went back to Jaffa gate the next morning and found  a guide that took us around Jerusalem. The most interesting thing about the Old City is that it is made up of layers and layers of different cultures, religions, and people, because it was conquered at least 38 times, and the different people just built a new city on top of the old one. When you look at the Old City wall, you can see three or four different layers. We went to a lot of different layers of the city, and you can see the difference in architecture. In the Roman layer, the streets are made of cobblestones, in the Turkish layer, there are little mini bridges in between the buildings, and so on.

Old City Jerusalem - door with Cross of Jerusalem

We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where we saw the bath where they bathed Jesus before burial, and we got to touch the rock where the cross stood.

We also got to walk the Via Dolorosa (Stations of the Cross), which is the path that Jesus walked with the cross, and we learned that you can rent a cross to carry along like Jesus did. We went to most of the stops, including the one where Veronica wiped his face, Simon helped him with the cross, the three times that he fell and the time where he saw Mary.

Station of the Cross where Jesus meets his mother, Mary

We also went into the markets, which were a little bit like Moroccan souks, but the stores were bigger, and they seem to sell more food. We tried some oblong shaped sesame bread shaped and fresh squeezed pomegranates.

We then went to the Wailing Wall.  The men go to one side and the women to the other. The Wailing Wall is inside the Old City walls, and it used to support the place where the Jewish Second Temple was built, but now there is a Mosque (Dome of the Rock) on the site. The Wailing Wall is a place where Jewish people go to feel close to their most holy place, where the first and second temples were built and eventually destroyed and is the place they believe the third temple will be built.  The wailing part comes from the fact that the Jewish people are crying because they can’t get to the Holy Place because it’s under the Mosque.  People write messages and prayers on slips of paper and put them in the wall because they believe that they are writing a message to God.

Wailing Wall in Old City, Jerusalem

The following morning,  we hired a taxi to take us to Bethlehem, which is in the West Bank and part of Palestine,  meaning the Jewish people are not allowed to go there. We were able to drive straight there without getting out. When we got there, we hired a guild and went straight to Church of the Nativity, which is the church built on the site where people believe Jesus was born. We learned that, despite everyone thinking he was born in a barn, he was actually born in a cave! The cave is now inside the church, and we went in and saw the spot where Christians believe is the spot where the manager was. The church itself was very pretty and decorated really nice. In some places, they had uncovered a mosaic floor. After the church, we grabbed street shwarma (which were really good) and went to a place where they make nativity scenes out of olive wood, and we bought one for our new house.

Savannah and Jackson outside of the Church of the Nativity

Back in Jerusalem, we went to the Holocaust Museum, which was one of the saddest places that I have ever been. It is so sad that someone could do those things to people! After we went through the main part, we went to the children’s memorial. It was beautiful, but extremely sad as well.  It was a maze of lights and mirrors and a voice said each child’s name out loud.

We also went to the Israeli museum, which was a really nice and interesting museum. First, we went to see the Dead Sea scrolls. It’s amazing to think that they were written  between 150 BC and 70 AS by some ancient Jewish people called the Essenes, and  and then discovered by accident in a cave.  In the same exhibit, they also had  little gas lamps, (one of them still had the remains of a wick!) combs, beads, lots of pottery, (dishes, etc.) and other daily used items. After the Dead Sea scrolls exhibit, we wandered through the rest of the museum, the Roman, Greek, Ancient Egyptian, paintings, etc. It was a great museum!

 After lunch, Dad, Jack, and I did the same tour of the Old City as before, but this time we had a different guide who spent his childhood in New York, so obviously he spoke great English. We went to the same places as before, but this time, we understood a lot better.

One day we went in on a day trip in a taxi with a really nice guy named Sam.  Before leaving Jerusalem,  Sam took us to the Mount of Olives.  We stopped at a few different places, the Garden of Gethsemane, and a viewpoint of Jerusalem. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we saw the place where Jesus was arrested, and we went into the church that was next to it.  The Assention Church was built on the spot where Jesus rose to heaven, and we saw what people think was his footprint. On the side of the mountain we stopped and looked out at Jerusalem, and the view was breathtaking! We had a great view of the Old City and some of the gates, and a great view of the Dome of the Rock. Before going down, we also drove past the place where Sam lives on the mountain.

View of Jerusalem from Mt of Olives

Sam then drove us to Masada which is a fortress on top of a mountain. We took a cable car to get up, and on the top we walked around and saw all of the ruins. One of the best parts was the bathhouse, which even had a steam room!

View of Dead Sea from Masada

We also made a stop at Qumran,  which is the place where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.  We went up to see the ruins where the Essenes people lived and spent their days working, bathing (they did a lot of bathing), eating, and making the Dead Sea scrolls. Almost two thousand years later two Bedouin shepards went after a sheep that strayed from the herd,  when they discovered a cave and that was the start of finding many caves in the area and many of the ancient scrolls.

Savannah, Paul & Jackson at Quram, in front of cave where first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found

After Qumran,  Sam took us to a beach on the Dead Sea.  It was one of the coolest parts of Israel, but unfortunately, my hands were chapped really badly so the salt stung really badly.  At least I managed to float once before having to get out.  Daddy enjoyed it the most of all of us.

Paul covered in Dead Sea mud

Our last stop was Jericho, which, like Bethlehem, is on the West Bank (In Palestine).  It is one of the oldest continually inhabeted cities in the world and is also below sea level. First, we went up a mountain by cable car. On the mountain, we climbed a little bit to get to the a Greek Orthadox Monestary at the Mountain of Temptation.  It was said that Jesus spent 40 days and nights here while being tempted by Satan.  After we took the cable car down, Sam insisted on taking us to a place that sells fruit and givin us some saying that the fruit from Jericho was the best in Israel.  We also bought some Jericho dates to bring back to the man who rented us the apartment as his is Jewish and no longer able to go to Jericho.

Savannah & Jackson at Jericho City sign

After five days in Jerusalem, we rented a car and drove to Nahariya, which is in the northeast part of Israel on the Mediterrainian Sea. On the way we stopped at Beit She’am, where there are some really well preserved Roman ruins. The best preserved building was the theatre, because during the earthquake that ruined the settlement and buried everything under ruble, two of the three sets of seating were buried, and because of that, it basically wasn’t touched until now. The seating is stone benches in a semicircle around the wooden stage and orchestra section. Above the two sets of seats that are still there, there are the entrances to the theatre and private boxes. There used to be a big building behind the wooden stage that hid the view of the main streets from the people in the theatre. The building was used as homes for the actors. Behind the theatre is one of two main streets that is street in the middle, and it is lined with columns behind which is the pedestrian walkway that is decorated with mosaics. Behind that street is the bathhouse, which contains the public toilets, public bath, and steam room. At the end of the big street, there is another one that goes across; together they look like a cross, but in Beit She’am the top of the T backs up to the base of a hill. When we climbed up the hill, we could see all of Beit She’am. It was really cool to look out at all the ruins.

Jackson Paul & Savannah in Ampitheatre, Bet She'am

After leaving Beit She’am, we had time for stop at a small museum by the Sea of Galilee, where there is a two thousand year old boat. Two guys were walking along the shore of the sea during an unnaturally low tide, when they found a nail and a small chunk of wood. After that, there was a whole process of digging it up and because they were scared that as soon as it hit air it would crumble, they had to be extremely careful. They think it could be either a boat that transported Jesus and his disciples across the Sea of Galilee, or just a fishing boat.  

The next morning we drove down to Akko, but it was raining and very windy, so we only looked around a little before leaving. We did get to go into a cistern, which was really cool. It was underground and it was more like a tunnel, but on either side of the walkway there was a little water. After that, we left Akko and went to Zippori (Sephorra), which was some more ancient Roman ruins but this time there was a lot of extremely well preserved mosaics. It had the same cross shaped Roman style main streets and a theatre and all of the ruins surrounding it, but those weren’t as well preserved as Beitshe’am, the main and best part was the mosaics, and those were amazing! There were patterns as well as pictures. In one place they even had what is called the Mona Lisa of Israel, because just like the French one, the woman’s eyes follow you wherever you go.  

Mosaic "Mona Lisa of Israel"" at Sepphoris

On February 17, we left IsraelL. We drove to the airport and flew to Turkey. The bright side of leaving Israel is that we get to see Auntie Lynn and Uncle Graham in Turkey!