On our way to Jordan

The bus picked this up this morning at our hotel. Not quite as fancy as the bus we had before and our luggage seems to have expanded a little bit. We began our drive to Jordan.  Our drive was through a very desert-y, verh hilly area.  Dotted with sheep and goats.  Really wanted to capture the shepherds and their sheep - often wonder how people from a different culture feel about tourists taking pictures of them...on shepherd let me know by giving me a hand signal common to all cultures.  Don't blame him - he is not an antiquity.  


We stopped at the Israeli border with a lot of other busses and cars, prepared with our entrance stamps and passports...they did not need them.  Then a few feet down the road we stopped at the Jordanian border and got out of the bus and entered a terminal - put our passports in a machine that spit out a slip of paper, and waited on the other side of the terminal for our next bus (this one has one seat on one side and two on the other).  No internet, but does have charging ports for phones. (Essential for travelers!).  Drove across a bridge and we finally crossed the border into Jordan- there was an Israeli flag and lookout post on the Israeli side of the border and lookouts and bunkers dotting the landscape on the Jordanian side.  The two countries are at peace and are working to gether to save the Dead Sea which the both border.

Our first stop was Mt. Nebo - our new guide- a Jordanian- was a stickler for keeping the group together and moving!  Mt. Nebo is where Moses died and there are beautiful mosaics in the church at the top of this beautiful mountain (LONG, hairpin curve road up to the area).  





After 20 minutes there our next stop will be a place where mosaics are handmade.  Cool place, set up by Queen Noor - anyone can go and get trained to do the handicraft and then they are offered jobs.  It was very interesting how these detailed mosaics are made.  They then let us into the showroom to shop - when you are offered cookies, you know you are heading for trouble.  They unleashed a swarm of muslim girls to help us in the store.  They were very persistent - and our guide was in no hurry to get us out of there!  Some people bought some very beautiful (and expensive) pieces, there really was no way to get out of the store without a bag in your hand.







Next stop - Lunch in Madaba - a buffet- and then a tour of a church in Madaba - again beautiful mosaics - this one famous and amazing because it is a map, that maps out all of the biblical towns with pictures.  After a quick visit there, we boarded the bus for Petra - a 3 hour drive with a bathroom stop in the middle - at a rest stop that looked amazingly like the gift shop we had been at previously.  (I did by ketchup flavored potato chips there).  



We got to Petra about 6:50 - had to eat and be ready at 7:45 for a night tour - candlelight hike into Petra. It was a beautiful hike - about 3 miles - finished at 10...so this is a late night blog - and the internet is so slow, I can't get my pictures to come up.  



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Qumran National Park, Bethlehem, Shepherds' Fields and Jerusalem

Image
 Shalom Shabbat!  On Shabbat, Jews are not supposed to do anything that "creates" (just as God created the world on the 6th day and on the 7th he rested) - so they cannot press a button (they have special elevators that stop on every floor so no one has to put a button), they cannot cook (they prepare ahead of time), nothing that is work, no flame making, no switching switches, etc.  and it all begins at Sundown the night before.  Lots of things are closed on Shabbat.   Our first stop was another National Park (Israel - the size of NJ, has 55!) which is the site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947)- a couple of Shepherds lost a sheep or two and were looking in the local caves (which dot the sides of the mountains) - they threw a rock into a cave and heard a pot break.  They went in and discovered a couple of large sealed jars.  They got professionals involved and found that the pots contained scrolls, written in Aramaic.  The scrolls which included books of the Old
Read more

Jerusalem Day 4- The Old City

Image
 Today we started in Mt. Zion - classic example of how the 3 main religions work together here.  At this one spot, because of the layers of history, it is thought that David's tomb was located and in the same spot,(in the basement) the Upper Room where the Last Supper was held.  The Christians wanted the Upper room, the Jews wanted David's Tomb - the Jews bought the place from the Christians that owned the church, when the Pope at the time found out he told them to get it back - of course they did not want to give it back, they had a contract...so they went to a muslim judge, who ultimately said it was a stalemate and took it over using eminent domain.  So, the both sites are now in a Mosque.   When Pope John Paul II came to visit he said he wanted to see the site of the last supper and he brought a beautiful art piece with him - an Olive tree with three main branches representing the 3 religions and with a wheat chaff and a grape vine wrapped around it symbolizing the Lord'
Read more

Hitting the ground running!

Image
Today ( a free day) we walked from one end of the Tel Aviv beach to the other (10 total miles on the day) to the ancient city of Jaffa - an occupied city for over 4000 years!  The old city featured a beautiful Catholic Church built on the ruins of an older Catholic Church and the home of Simon the Tanner who had Peter, the Apostle over.   While he was there, Peter raised Tabitha from the dead and in Acts a;:15 interprets his vision as devine permission to preach Christianity to Jews and pagans alike - a historic point in which Christianity evolved to a worldwide religion. This city is also the city that Jonah set off from in the story of Jonah and the Whale.  It has been a very important port in the Mediteranean Sea throughout history. This was followed by a a great lunch at the White Pergula - where there was no actual white pergula and a nap in the sun by the pool.  We will leave Tel Aviv tomorrow.  
Read more