Middle East
5 adventures documented
IsraelA new corner of Israel at Haifa: the closed Bahá'í gardens, the Byzantine mosaics at Shavei Tzion, and Rosh Hanikra, where the world's steepest cable car drops to the sea grottos on the Lebanese border. John's leg, skinned in Wadi Rum, kept us aboard rather than bound for Jerusalem. Then south to Egypt and a long day's sail through the Suez Canal, under the great bridge to the Sinai.
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IsraelOur three days in Israel ended in Bethlehem, just across the line on the Palestinian side, where an Israeli guide handed us to a local Palestinian Muslim guide who walked us into the Church of the Nativity ahead of the lines. We knelt where Jesus is said to have been born, browsed the olive-wood carvings in his little shop, and then ran into trouble leaving: a fire on the road, a backed-up crossing, and a long walk on foot through tunnels and checkpoints to get back into Israel, with our guide telling us to keep it to ourselves. Standing where Christ was born, and the day before where he was crucified, left us with chills we still feel.
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IsraelOur last full day in Israel was a long walk through the Old City of Jerusalem, the kind of day you do not forget. We started at the Zion Gate and the room of the Last Supper, passed the Roman Cardo and the golden menorah, and took in the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. Then we followed the Via Dolorosa, station by station, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and ended on the Mount of Olives looking across at the sealed Eastern Gate. Holy ground for three faiths, layered one century atop another.
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IsraelOn our second day in Israel a new guide drove us two and a half hours south into the desert, to Herod's mountaintop fortress at Masada, where 960 Jewish zealots made their last stand against Rome. From there we floated in the Dead Sea, muddy and crowded and unforgettable, then drove up to Jerusalem to spend the night inside the Old City. That evening we stumbled into a Palestinian Christian restaurant for a wonderful lamb shank, and learned at the front desk that we had gone to the wrong place, our first lesson in how finely the divisions are drawn here.
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IsraelOur three days in Israel began on a free Friday we had not planned for. We talked Gordon and Karen into joining us, hired a driver named Haim, and set off for Nazareth, where it all began. We saw the two great Churches of the Annunciation, heard an Arab Christian family in Cana describe living as neighbors with their Jewish countrymen, and dipped our hands in the Jordan where Jesus was baptized. The day ended with the four of us over Lebanese food on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
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