Adler 2018 trip to Israel and Jordan

Our trip has finally ended. We had a 7am shuttle to the Ben Gurion airport, a relatively quick check through Israeli security and departed on United flight UA085 at 10:30.  The flight was scheduled to take 12 1/2 hours but was actually an hour faster, arriving in Newark at 4pm. Of course with the early arrival, a gate was not available and we had to wait 20 minutes to disembark. I used the Mobile Passport app on my phone and it took less than a minute to get through the immigration hall. Even the Global Entry line was slower. We rented a car and started on our way home. Being Friday afternoon, the rush-hour traffic on the Garden State Parkway was stop and go for quite a while but despite that, we made it home a little after 8pm. Carmen had made a fire in the woodstove so the house was toasty warm. The Road Scholar trip we took, "Journey of a Lifetime: Israel and Jordan" certainly met my expectations and then some although at times there was Roman ruin "overload"

A relaxing start to the morning - we didn't leave the hotel until 9am. Our first and main stop was the old city of Jaffa that has been used as a port since Roman times. It is a shallow port so it is only used by small fishing boats. Cruise ships can only dock at Haifa and two other deep water ports. We passed a 13th century BC Egyptian arch with clear Egyptian hieroglyphics (actually a reproduction - the original is in an Egyptian museum). It is amazing that the Egyptian culture was so far from where we think of the center in Egypt. We visited the house of Simon the Tanner where St. Peter brought Tabitha back to life  as recorded in the New Testament book of Acts. There were lots of steps up and down narrow alleyways in the old city. From there we went to the Sarona district of Tel Aviv which is the site of the Christian German Templar settlement in the 1860s. They brought modern farming and industrial technology to Israel and were quite successful until the British forced

We had to leave our hotel on the Dead Sea to be the first to arrive at the Allenby crossing into Israel. We were there first but inexplicably, the bus had to wait 20 minutes before being allowed in. Going through Jordanian immigration was pretty quick. Going through Israeli immigration was quick for most of us although my mother had to undress for a pat-down when she said she had a pacemaker - this was the first time she had been subject to such a search. After this process there was another inexplicable problem with the bus which didn't arrive until about 30 minutes later. Overall, it took over two hours to get through. Our first stop was a facility where we sifted for artifacts. In 1999, without the knowledge of the Antiquities department, a Muslim group started digging for a new mosque and carted many truckloads of material to a dump, highly illegal. Since then there has been a project to go though the debris to sift for valuable artifacts. The manual labor is mostly done by t

Another beautiful morning, waking to the sound of the Rose Finches, the Jordanian national bird. After breakfast we walked down to the hotel beach and walked into the water just over our ankles. The bottom is very pebbly and difficult to walk on - will wear Tevas when swimming this afternoon. The water is quite a way down in the hotel complex, 1200 steps, .5 miles and the equivalent of 15 flights of stairs! This was an easy day. We didn't leave until 9:20 to visit Bethany on the Jordan. This is where Elijah is said to have ascended to heaven on fiery chariot - we saw the hill from which he ascended. We also saw the cave where John the Baptist stayed for protection against lions and other wild creatures. We saw the spot where Jesus was baptized and where he took his robe off to go into the water. The Jordan River is now several hundred feet to the west. Before the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1994, there was a large no-mans-land and nobody was allowed near the

Our main activity today was to Wadi Rum, a high desert area in southern Jordan. One of the more interesting things that we encountered by chance was a simulation of Lawrence of Arabia's attack on the Ottoman train. The road to Wadi Rum runs along the old Ottoman train line that ran from Istanbul to Aqaba, Jordan. We passed beside the steam train billowing black smoke, carrying passengers and Ottoman soldiers in an open car. Simulated gunfire came from the hillside towards the train and then we saw "Lawrence of Arabia" and his troops riding horses, firing guns and brandishing swords! Wadi Rum, "Sand Valley", it a high valley surrounded by rugged sandstone mountains ranging up to 6000'. The fine sand is a reddish color that has blown into sand dunes in spots. Our tour included a trip in 4x4 trucks, mostly beat up Toyota, Nissan and Isuzu truck which had bench seats for 6 in the back. Our group of 24 had 5 trucks in a "caravan". The trucks charg

Petra is the 7th modern wonder of the world. Its main culture started in the 4th century BC with the Nabateans who were merchant traders and controlled some of the important trading routes from the middle-east to Africa and Europe, mainly Rome. At the time, Frankincense and Myrrh were twice as valuable as gold and these substances were in great demand for Roman rituals. Petra was at its height in the first century BC and first century AD. Petra was a city of 20,000 to 30,000 people with large temples and a large amphitheater. Petra is located in Wadi Musa, the valley of Moses and the only access is through a very narrow, 10' - 50' wide, and very deep mile-long cut through the rock which made it almost invisible and easily defend-able.  Petra is in the desert with very little water but the Nabateans were very skillful in hydrology and constructed aqueducts to collect and transport water to reservoirs inside the city. Petra is famous for the many spectacular facades cut into th

The morning started with a visit to the "Citadel" in Amman. This was called Philadelphia in Roman times and was one of the 10 cities of the Roman decapolis on the eastern frontier of the Roman empire, 10 major cities along the route from Damascus, Syria to Amman, Jordan. In biblical times this was the land of the Ammonites. Roman baths, temples and Byzantine churches have been excavated at the top of the mountain which looks down at a large amphitheater. We next visited the King Abdullah I mosque which was constructed to commemorate the first king of Jordan who became king in 1948 when Jordan achieved independence from the UK. The current king, King Abdullah II, is the 4th King of Jordan. All the women had to put on black robes with hoods - I'm afraid that they looked like a coven of Wicca priestesses.  The mosque holds 5000 worshipers at one time. At the time we were there, it was empty except for our tour group. Our guide spent some time explaining the difference betw

Considerably cooler today with temperatures in the 60s although still no rain and mostly sunny. Our first stop was Beit She'an in Israel, very well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins dating back to the 4th to the 8th century. There are huge Roman baths and an amphitheater that could seat 15000 people. This was an ancient Roman city which after Emperor Constantine became a Christian city in the 4th century. Unfortunately, there was a major earthquake in the 4th century, it was rebuilt and then destroyed by an earthquake in the 8th century and abandoned after that. All of the stone columns fell to the south, helping archaeologists and geologists understand the direction that the earth shifted. The main Roman road through the center of the city still exists as a smooth road with the original paving stones. The paving stones were arranged diagonally which lessened the jarring of wagons and carts as they traveled along and the center was raised to allow the water to run off. Pretty amazing

Our first stop this morning was Nazareth, heading around the bottom of the Sea of Galilee and heading west halfway across Israel along a rather winding road. We visited the Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation which is where it is believed that the Archangel Gabriel informed Mary that she would conceive Jesus. There is currently a huge Catholic church from the 1970s which is the largest Christian church in the middle-east. Inside are the remnants of a church from the time of the Crusades and below, parts of a Byzantine church from the 4th century. In this church is part of a cave in which Mary and Joseph are alleged to have lived. Inside and outside the Catholic church are representations of the Virgin Mary from many of the countries around the world - very interesting to see. The streets of Nazareth are lined with both typical shops for locals as well as many for tourists. Nazareth is also the site of Jesus first miracle of turning water to wine which has resulted in shops with

Fortunately we are accustomed to getting up early as our suitcases needed to be outside our room by 7am for an 8am departure. We headed east out of Jerusalem into the West Bank, past the security wall separating the West Bank from Israel. There was a lot of construction of apartment buildings for the growing Palestinian population. There is some concern that the same Israeli building standards are not being followed and an earthquake could be catastrophic to poorly constructed concrete buildings. We soon entered the Judean desert, steep rolling hills with a small amount of green vegetation. Our guide said that in another month this would be all brown, similar to Southern California after the winter. We descended deeply into the valley of the Dead Sea, turning south along the Dead Sea. The topology of the Dead Sea is very similar to Death Valley, with mountains on both sides that are separating and lifting up, leaving a low plain in between. There are also "badlands", simi

Another beautiful and warm day in Jerusalem. Our first stop was the Western ("Wailing") Wall which is the only remaining part of the Second Temple constructed by King Herod and destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. On the drive up it was interesting to see the many small caves carved out of the soft limestone. It is easy to imagine the kind of cave that Jesus might have been born in. When we visited the cave of his birth in Bethlehem, it was hard to tell that it had been a cave. I put a prayer on a slip of paper and put it in a crack in the wall and also did my morning prayers at the wall - hopefully ok for non-Jews. It was quite moving to be there and to think that Jesus had been there 2000 years ago. The wall is controlled by the Orthodox Jewish authorities so there were separate security lines for women and separate areas of the wall that can be visited by men and women. From there we walked up to the site of the Last Supper. The room that is there now was actually constr