13 July: Day 6: Jerusalem

The very hot and stunningly extravagant Masada Nation Park was our first stop today. This site, in the middle of a desert that gets 3 inches of rain a year, was where Herod the Great chose to build his sprawling and luxurious winter  palace. Despite the lack of any sort of natural resources, Herod managed to build a palace that could house 1,000 people and included storerooms, cisterns that could hold thousands of gallons of water, a bathhouse and huge quarters for the king, soldiers, servants and slaves. Although Herod poured countless amounts of money into this project, it’s unknown if he ever actually got to live there.

Because Masada is on the top of a plateau it was easily defensible and in 70 CE became the last stronghold of the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem. Flavius Silva led a Roman siege against the Jews at Masada, and since apparently there is an old movie that illustrates this story I won’t give away the ending. Today you can take a cable car up and down the plateau to see the remains of Herod’s palace. After a very hot walk around Masada we had shwarma for lunch, which neither Papa nor I liked as well as falafel. Papa was also very surprised to learn that falafel have no meat in them, after 5 days of eating them.

Another bus ride brought us into Jerusalem, and our bus driver tried to set the scene by playing some music as we came to the crest of a hill and saw the city for the first time. We stopped near the Mount of Olives and saw a replica of a tomb from the time of Jesus, where homeless people apparently sleep at night. Papa and I avoided the mounds of trash to climb through the tomb’s back entrance. (But seriously, giving a tomb a second, unsealed entrance is just asking for zombies.)

Poor Lamar, being prepared for burial.

Papa climbing out of the tomb.

Our second stop in Jerusalem was a store that sells olive wood things that was a little out of our price range. It was actually a lot out of our price range, since one of the nativity sets I thought was nice cost 4,000 DOLLARS!!!!! They had things in there for well over $10,000 too. We didn’t buy anything.

Lastly , we went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Or rather, where the Catholic church decided the Garden of Gethsemane was and built a church there. Mickey the tour guide was again very dismissive of the Italian gardens.

Finally, we checked into the hotel that we will be in for our last 4 nights in Israel. It’s another fancy one with no free wifi but I got the guy at the desk to give me a code for a free hour, and he said that if I write a Trip Advisor review with his name in it he’ll give me a 24 hour code tomorrow. Actually, I didn’t “get” him to do anything, I just stood by another girl on the tour who is much better at bargaining than I am and rode on her coattails.

We saw one tank today and many heavily armed policemen. Wow they walk around casually with such big guns! We were assured that we will be safe, but that statement was tempered a bit when she also told us what to do if the rocket sirens go off. Since Papa and I are on the sixth floor and couldn’t get down to the bomb shelter in the 90 seconds that the sirens give you, we’re supposed to go to the stairwell. It’s not guaranteed that there will be rocket fire, but given this week it’s not unlikely. Please thank the Lord for our safety and enjoyment on the trip, and ask that it will continue.