Day 2 in Israel

Day 1 in Israel ends, Day 2 begins.

Back on the bus, we all compared experiences...   We’d all brought something back from the Dead Sea…  several of us brought mud, some brought water and the shoppers brought all kinds of neat things! That night after a quick dinner, we dragged off to bed, exhausted! 

Day 2 in Israel:

The next morning, we and our good friends Sheila and Carol, came downstairs to a breakfast filled with wild laughter.  It seems that another good friend had brought back a bottle of Dead Sea water to save, and put it in her hotel room fridge.  During the night her husband got up thirsty and accidentally took a huge gulp of the thousand-percent salt and mineral water of the Dead Sea!  (that stuff was really awful!)  At breakfast he was still a little green as he told everyone that his wife tried to kill him! 

 I should mention that our guide, Leo had studied for four years (!) in order to become a tour guide, and that he was, naturally, very proud of his country and its history.  Our first stop was Herodian – Herod’s fortress also known as Masada.    When Leo spoke of King Herod, his eyes shined.

 He told us that Herod is known in Israel as a great king, because he was a prolific builder, building not only palaces, but bridges and roads and waterways, etc.   

And when Herod didn’t like the original size of the mountain he’d picked for his castle, he had Jewish “workers” (they were actually slaves) build another huge hill on top of the original one!

Here you can see a building half-way up: it is an archeological research facility– and our drop of point.

From there we climbed the lower stairs… …to get to the hundreds of upper stairs  that took us up to the fortress.

Leo explained that Herod had wanted his mountain palace to be high enough to see his entire kingdom – and it sure was!

From this height you really can see the kingdom

The area where we gathered had what once were huge columns on each side – most likely his receiving room.

                                                Then we set off for the lower levels…

Massive, steep steps led down, down, down to the jails and the lower cisterns.

We  got a glimpse of the lowest level where the jails had been, and then finally followed yet another tunnel outside… to the theater area where Herod gave his speeches.  The grave of Herod was right behind the windows above the theater.

By the time we walked down all the stairs to the bus, we were all anxious to get to our next destination – the shepherds’ field and the actual cave where the shepherds were staying when Jesus was     born.   Join us on Friday….