Jerusalem, Israel

After breakfast we departed by bus for Masada & the Dead Sea. Within 20 minutes we were driving along the Banks of the Dead Sea. Soon we could smell the sulfite in the air. We continued to drive another hour to take the cable car to the top of Masada, the ancient cliff top fortress built by King Herod the Great. Masada occupies the entire top of an isolated mesa near the southwest coast of the Dead Sea. This was the site of the Jews’ last stand against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem. We toured the series of palaces atop the plateau, taking in the old mosaic floors and dried up swimming pools and baths.  It is a huge structure that encompasses about 18 acres. There are such amazing views of the entire valley and the Dead Sea from Herod’s palace. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001. We hopped back on our buses and headed to Kalia Beac, a public beach, to have lunch and take a dip in the Dead Sea. At lunch we enjoyed more of the Mediterranean cuisine and were served Maqluba. Large Pots turned upside down were rolled out of the kitchen and then the pots are gently lifted up to reveal a variety of vegetables, such as fried tomatoes, potatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, and chicken or lamb. The name maqluba translates literally as “upside-down”. We then went down the steep incline to, what they call the beach, to soak in the mineral rich waters of the Dead Sea. It was far from the experience I was expecting. The incline to the beach area was very rocky and intolerably hot to walk on without shoes. There were cheap Rubbermaid chairs strewn about the shore. As it is a public beach, there were some locals there having a dip too. You have to step down an large banked incline to enter the waters. The sea floor has slick mud and craggy rock and is very uneven. The water is so murky you can’t see anything. It is very hard to walk in it. We finally figured out that it’s just better to sit down on your bum and start floating in the shallow water. You are amazingly buoyant which is fun, but a few minutes in the water is about all you need as the sun is so blisteringly hot. While the minerals and salt in the sea are professed to do wonders for your skin, it makes your hair look like a scary Rastafarian! We returned to the hotel and took a quick shower to get the sea salt off of our bodies. Then we ran down and hopped on the bus with Ingrid and Chris and Esther 1 to head to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, home to some of Christianity and Islam’s holiest landmarks.  It is a town in the West bank 5 miles south of Jerusalem. We crossed through a gated, military-manned security checkpoint and a large wall into Bethlehem on our way to a Palestinian refugee camp. It made me very nervous that one of our guides is forbidden to cross into that zone and could be arrested if caught. She opted to act like she was a tourist and did not speak so no one would notice her accent. We walked about and learned about Palestinian life after decades of conflict. It is a very depressing site. The wall , which was created in 2000, is full of graffiti. 97% of the wall is actually just a fence. There is very little traffic or any people on the streets. We see a few kids and a few cars drove by. It is incomprehensible to me that people can be “locked” in an area and forbidden to leave. Finally, we reached the coup de gras of the trip….The Church of the Nativity. We toured the Church and took photos of the area where a 14 point star marks the spot believed to be the site of the manger where Christ was born.   The most sobering site was the tomb where Herod threw the bodies of the babies he assassinated in his attempt to find and kill the Christ child. We then toured the Armenian Church where St. Jerome translated the Bible for the first time from Hebrew into English. On the way out of the city, I had to snap a photo of the freighting sign warning about entering the A Zone at risk of your life. This evening we gathered at an Armenian restaurant in the Old City for farewell cocktails and dinner. Afterwards, Jim and Kat and Lou and Dena and I walked home through the crowds and shopping center. It was fun to see the sights and sounds. We saw a large group of teenage boys doing a mob dance type performance outside the wall. The whole area was incredibly packed with people. The light show draws in thousands of people from afar to party and celebrate. The King David Hotel Jerusalem THE DEAD SEA The Dead Sea also called the Salt Sea is a landlocked lake between Israel and Jordan in southwestern Asia. Its eastern shore belongs to Jordan and the southern half of its western shore belongs to Israel. The northern half of the western shore lies within the Palestinian West-Bank and has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli-war. The Jordan-River from which the Dead Sea receives nearly all its water flows from the north into the lake. The Dead Sea lies in a desert and has the lowest elevation and is the lowest body of water on the surface of Earth. Rainfall is scanty and irregular. The waters are extremely saline, and, generally, the concentration of salt increases toward the lake’s bottom. The saline water has a high density that keeps bathers buoyant. The fresh water of the Jordan stays on the surface, and in the spring its muddy colour can be traced as it spreads southward from the point where the river empties into the Dead Sea. The lake’s extreme salinity excludes all forms of life except bacteria. Fish carried in by the Jordan or by smaller streams when in flood die quickly. Apart from the vegetation along the rivers, plant life along the shores is discontinuous and consists mainly of halophytes (plants that grow in salty or alkaline waters). BETHLEHEM Bethlehem is an agricultural market and trade town that is closely linked to nearby Jerusalem. For a long time the town has been important as a pilgrim and tourist centre, although, in the decades following the Six-Day War, tourism and pilgrimage were frequently affected by the ongoing conflict. The manufacture of religious articles, chiefly of mother-of-pearl, is a traditional industry, as is the carving of olivewood. Bethlehem and its suburbs have many churches, convents, schools, and hospitals supported by Christian denominations the world over. A large proportion of the town’s population is Christian. Bethlehem University (1973) offers instruction in both Arabic and English.