On our way home

December 16, 2010—Thursday
Today did not work out the best, but it was still a good day. We drove through Cana to go to Nazareth. Cana is a small Palestinian town with lots of traffic. Nazareth is a city spread out on two hills and in the valley in between with narrow streets and lots of traffic. We weren’t successful in seeing the Church of the Annunciation, where the Angel Gabriel came to Mary. There are a couple of churches by that name. We passed one but could not stop because there was no place to park on the narrow street, or down the street.
We did get to see part of the Jezreel Valley, or the Valley of Armageddon, but from our vantage point, we could only see the southeast part. We did end up driving through the Valley of Armageddon on the way to Caesarea.
When we arrived there, half of the park was closed because of the storm on Saturday. It washed away the breakwater, and the waves are washing away the beach. They fear what is left of Caesarea will fall into the Med. The storm also caused part of a cliff to fall, revealing a headless Roman statue. We did get to see where Paul testified before King Agrippa II, at least through the fence.
We went over and sat in the Roman amphitheater. I could hear a guy having a phone conversation on the other side of the theater on the top room. Perfect acoustics. We also discovered the ancient dressing rooms under the theater’s stage area. It looks like they are still used as dressing rooms because there was a costume in a plastic bag hanging in each cubicle. The cubicles have had mirrors added to them. In several were round stone basins on the floor, I guess for water.
Caesarea was a huge port designed by Herod the Great. He had a protected harbor created to bring trade there. He had a palace on the beach, a lighthouse, a temple to a Roman god, a hippodrome for chariot races, and the theater. It was a great feat constructing it in a short time. It changed hands a couple of times between Muslims, Byzantines, Crusaders, etc.
Caesarea was about it for us. We drove through Tel Aviv and on to the airport.
It has been a really great trip. We were able to see more places than on the previous trip and take our own time doing them. It has been a great blessing to share this with Logan.

Pictures of final days in Israel

December 15, 2010—Wednesday
It was leaking in the hall again when we got up this morning. There was no breakfast provided; Logan thought it was because we are the only ones in the place.
It took us about three hours to drive to Capernaum. Along the way, we saw two small herds of camels with their shepherds (?) riding a donkey with them. We also saw thousands of hothouses during those three hours—not that they are everywhere, most of the way was desert. We were right on the border with Jordan, and in one valley, we saw at least a thousand hothouses and many lush farms.
At one barrier (as they call the checkpoints), the guards asked us to pull over and be inspected. This was a Palestinian checkpoint. We did not go into lands under control by the Palestinian Authority, but some places are Palestinian. One town was theirs; we could tell by the people on the street and unfortunately, the amount of garbage on the road.
We had no problem at the barrier. We had to take all of our luggage out and run it through a scanner while they looked over the car, under the hood, and had a drug dog sniff it out. It was actually a nice break on the drive so we could stretch.
To get to Capernaum, we drove through Tiberias which is a resort town on the Sea of Galilee. It has nice beach areas and modern hotels. There were very few people in Capernaum, which was nice. It is amazing the number of miracles and things that happened there. The Savior healed a man with an evil spirit in the synagogue there. (The remains of the synagogue there now was built on top of that synagogue.) The Savior healed the Centurion’s servant from there and then went to Peter’s house and healed his mother-in-law. (There are ruins about 30 yards from that synagogue that are said to be Peter’s house. It is octagonal in shape, and there is a church literally built over it on steel beams so you can walk up to the fence surrounding the house and look in. The church also has a glass floor in the center so you can look down into the remains of his house. I would think Peter was a successful fisherman with a house that big and that close to the synagogue.) The Savior also identified himself as “the Bread of Life” here, and He told his disciples they must eat his flesh and drink his blood while at this place, and many of them followed Him no more. He asked the Apostles if they would leave, too, and Peter replied, “Where will we go? Thou hast the words of life.”
Many miracles were performed here, yet the Savior cursed Capernaum for not believing in Him. Today, there is only a church there and a building used by the officials of the church.
The Savior spent so much time there that Capernaum is referred to as “His town” or “Jesus’ town.” You have to wonder where he slept while he was there. Perhaps in Peter’s house.
From there, we went to the Church of the Multiplication, the traditional place where the Savior fed 5,000. A group from Lagos was there also. It was a small church with a bedrock formation for the altar. There is a statue out in the garden area of the Savior telling Peter to feed His sheep.
We drove up a couple of hillsides to get to the Mount of the Beatitudes. We were the only ones there until we left and the group from Lagos arrived. After touring the church built there in 1935, we went out to the hillside to look out on the Sea of Galilee. There is a banana tree orchard right beside this area, so you have to look to the side of it to see the sea. There was also a huge banana tree orchard beside the road driving in, and the workers were stacking boxes of green bananas they had harvested.
We read most of the Beatitudes on the hillside down from the church and spent some time pondering.
I mentioned to Logan how close together these three places are: Capernaum, the place of the feeding of the 5,000, and the Mount of the Beatitudes—a couple of miles at the most separate them all, although much is uphill.
Another geographical note, there is a range of mountains that run parallel to Tiberias to the south and to the east. Walking to Jerusalem from here was an arduous trip of either going over or around them.
The drive back to Tiberius was easy, and it was a relief to check into a modern hotel.
Tomorrow is Nazareth, Caesarea, and Mt. Carmel if we have time. Then the flight is at 11 pm.
( I will add pictures when they send me some new ones)

December 14, 1010—Tuesday
We awoke to water dripping in the hall this morning and standing water over by Logan’s bed that had leaked under the door. The water line in the attic had broken. We also had no power. Well, I wanted the OC (Old City) experience, and we have gotten it.
We walked to the Garden Tomb out the Damascus Gate and up Nablus Road about 8:30 am, the time their website said they opened. The workers there let us know it opened at nine, so we had a few minutes to wait and ponder. We also saw a souvenir seller back his car up the 15-foot-wide alley leading to the Garden, open up his trunk and set up his business.



We were the first in, so Logan and I went right to the Garden Tomb and spent a few minutes there alone. We stood in the Weeping Chamber on the left side and looked in where the Lord lay. We could hear horns honking out in the street and birds cawing out in the Garden. The peace of the Garden Tomb overwhelmed them.
We joined a group from Singapore for the tour. They all spoke English. We marveled that they traveled so far for their faith, and there were five kids or so in the group.
The guide said the garden was actually an agricultural garden, a vineyard, because there is a winepress area, a place to stomp grapes and a small vat for the juice. He also said there is a water system/cistern below the garden that can hold 1 million liters of water, and we saw a photo of people on ladders down in the cistern. We also saw the hole that goes down into the cistern. The guide said it is the third-largest water system in Jerusalem.
After we left the Garden, we walked back toward the Damascus Gate and walked east a little way. There is a cave under the wall of Jerusalem. It is Zedekiah’s Cave. It was through this that King Zedekiah escaped from the Chaldean siege of Jerusalem after Lehi left Jerusalem. He escaped for a while, that is, before he was captured and blinded. All his sons were killed but Mulek, who was taken to the New World. We just looked into the cave and did not pay the entry fee to go in.
We started to walk on down the wall to go to the Mount of Olives when a cab driver stopped and started asking us if we wanted a tour. I told him “no,” but he said he would give us a free ride there since he was going that way. Knowing there would be a price to pay, but not wanting to have to walk all the way over there because we had a lot to do today, I told him I would pay him to take us to the Dome of the Ascension.
To my surprise, the driver took us to another place. I didn’t recognize it as the place where I went before, which I found out was actually where Jesus cried over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44), the Dominus Flevitus. It cost 5 shekels each (about $1.35) for us to go into the Dome of Ascension. It’s funny that the Palestinians seem to be those who collect the entrance fees at the Christian sites. (The Garden Tomb was free; it is owned by a British nonprofit organization.) The dome was plain and unadorned, unimproved. It had four straight pieces of marble laid out in a rectangle to enclose a stone that was supposed to be where Jesus ascended.
The Dome is up on the Mount of Olives to the south of Gethsemane. From it, we walked down the hill along a road that went in between the Jewish cemetery that dominates most of the southeastern side of the hill. A green door in a wall down the hill opens to the Church of Mary Magdalene. It is a beautiful church with about seven golden onion tops, like Russian buildings. We walked up two flights of stone stairs in a garden area to get to the church. Upstairs was the shrine area. I had thought the church was build over her tomb, and in fact, there are two coffins on either side of the front of the altar area. But she is not in them. The coffins are glass covered, and we could see a short figure inside each, covered in a white cloth. As we looked at the coffin and a box with bones beside it, a nun came up and asked Logan to take his hand out of his pocket, to show respect for the relics. There were bones in the box of eight or ten saints or leaders from that orthodoxy, and a bone of Mary Magdalene’s, the nun said.
She spoke English and explained that the woman in one of the coffins was a sister of the Romanov Family, the rulers of Russia before the Revolution. She was an abbess at a church she started there in Russia. She was killed with the Romanovs.
She didn’t tell us about the other person in the second coffin.
We walked back to the OC through Stephen’s Gate. I asked a guy if the Temple Mount was open. (The cab driver said it was only open from 8 to 10 am.) He did not speak English, so he directed me to St. Anne’s Church, which it turns out is by the Bethesda Pool and near the traditional birthplace of the Virgin Mary. It was also the place where the Savior healed a man lame for 38 years who waited by the pool for the angel who troubled the waters. The first to get in was healed.

We paid the fee and went in. The BYU Jerusalem students were there doing a tour.
The Bethesda Pool is not like a swimming pool. It is more like a conglomeration of pools and a cistern. It looks like a complex; it has been added to, of course. It was very deep in some places and quite intricate with passageways and the remains of a building.
We went into the church, but saw no signs about where Mary was born. There was a sign saying, “No explanations,” so we left.




Logan and I went to the Temple Mount in the afternoon, and we could see that the Pool of Bethesda was about 200 yards west of where the temple once stood.
On the Mount, we walked where the Temple of Herod once stood. It would have been to the north of where the Dome of the Rock now stands. We also walked to the south wall and looked through the arrow port in the wall out on the ruins of the purification pools. At 1:30 pm, an Arab man directed us toward the exit because visiting time for non-Muslims is from 12:30 to 1:30. We went to the Western Wall and waited for our next tour. As we left, we asked a young Jewish man what he thought the temple was for. He was from New York and had recently moved back. He told us the temple was for the sacrifice of animals for forgiveness of sins, for thanksgiving, and for holy days. We asked why they did not sacrifice animals now, and he said it was because there was no temple. He did believe the temple would be rebuilt and that animal sacrifice would return. It was an interesting conversation.
Another mistake I made today was in thinking I bought tickets to Hezekiah’s Tunnel, when in fact, I bought tickets to the tour of the Western Wall below ground, which was actually what I also wanted to do.
The complete temple wall was actually 488 meters long. The wall there today is only part of what used to be there. The wall was about 190 feet high. The tour took us below the streets of Jerusalem near the wall. We went down a couple of levels and looked down even further through a window.
The tour showed us one stone that was 45 feet long by 12 feet high by 15 feet in depth. It weighed 680 tons. It was 30 feet above the base of the wall. The guide said that slab protected the base when an earthquake hit.
We walked for at least 200 yards along the wall, passing slab after slab of stones marked with Herod’s mark, a beveled edge around the perimeter of one face of the stone. We also saw a video of how the stones where quarried and laid, using just oxen, ropes, pulleys, rolling logs, and A frames. It was impressive.
On to Galilee tomorrow.

Dead Sea and Massada

December 13, 2010—Monday
It was raining when we awoke this morning, and it was cold when we left for the Dead Sea. We got lost again in traffic, but we eventually made it to Hwy. 1 West. We also stopped and picked up another orthodox Jewish man whom we saw on the street in the rain and who pointed at the street when we drove near. Fortunately, he spoke a little English. He asked if we had been to the tomb of somebody that we did not recognize a famous Jewish person. We had not, of course, and he could hardly believe it. When we told him we were going to the Dead Sea (in the rain), he could hardly believe that, too. We said we hoped it would stop raining, but as he got out of the car at his stop, he said he did not think so.
But it did, actually, about as soon as we got out of Jerusalem. Outside the town to the west, it becomes a wilderness wasteland. Hilly, barren, and dry—when it isn’t raining. We passed several Bedouin camps with square, one-room “houses” of sheet metal, plywood and cardboard. One camp we passed was within eyesight of relatively modern apartment buildings on a hill.

As we drove out, Lehi’s trek was on our minds. That was not an easy walk through this desert, up and down very high hills. They would have needed to have known where to find water because they could not have carried enough to get all the way to the Red Sea before heading west for three days.
We also thought about Nephi, Sam, Laman and Lemuel walking all that way and then going back to Jerusalem twice. Roundtrip: at least a month’s walk, not counting the time in Jerusalem. With nothing to talk about, like sports, Laman and Lemuel must have been hating life and making life miserable for Nephi and Sam. They were right; it was a hard thing their father and the Lord had asked them to do.
We stopped at Qumran first to see where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s. A guy in a vest and sort of safari hat was being filmed by a crew while we were there.
Then we drove to Masada. The cost for an adult ticket and a student ticket (Logan has gotten in for half price everywhere because he is a student) was about $50, but that included the cable car ride up to Masada. You also have to pay if you want to walk the Snake Path up to Masada, but it is a killer and would have taken us another hour.
From Masada, we drove to Ein Gedi so we could swim in the Dead Sea. Being below sea level, the temperature was much warmer there. It was warmer at Masada, too, which is 22 meters above sea level. The Dead Sea at Ein Gedi is the lowest point in the world.
The swim was great. The water was about the temperature of an unheated swimming pool in the summer. The air temperature was around 70. It was really relaxing in the Dead Sea.
It is interesting that they have lifeguards there. The only way to drown is trip on the beach, hit your head on a rock, and roll face down into the Dead Sea and stay that way.
On the way back, we stopped at a gas station and rode a camel and bought some fresh dates. Just so I don’t give the wrong impression, not every gas station here has camel rides and dates.
We have one more day in Jerusalem. Tomorrow morning, we go to the Garden Tomb.

Sunday Picture of Dust storm coming in from the Dead Sea

December 12, 2010—Sunday
Today, the wind was blowing again, and it was dusty, hazy and dirty. We headed out in morning traffic through Jerusalem, back up Hwy. 1 to find the Valley of Elah and Zoar. It didn’t take us too long to get lost. We took an exit too early and drove around a settlement out in the country for just a little while. When we did get on the right road, we drove through the Valley of Zoar where Samson released the foxes with their tales tied together and dragging firebrands through the Philistines’ corn. We then drove back to an old tel (Tel is a hill that city after city has been built on top of each other) and parked on the hill to look out over the valley. Pottery shards were scattered around on the ground, and we picked up a few. There were also some ruins on the tel, rock walls and rooms built into the ground.
From there, we drove to Elah, where David slew Goliath. Along the way, an orthodox Jewish man standing by the side of the road stepped out a bit and pointed down at the road. This was like sticking out your thumb to ask for a ride. It was a cold, windy, dusty day, so we stopped. He did not look dangerous with his black hat, white shirt, black coat and long, curly sideburns.
Unfortunately, he spoke no English, and we did not understand where he was going, but we pointed up the road, and he went with us. I asked in Spanish if he spoke Spanish, and I even tried a little German, but he shook his head, and I think he said “no” in Hebrew. Logan showed him the map, and he was not able to show us where he was going because the map was in English.
We drove for five minutes before we got to the Valley of Elah, and we let him know that was as far as we were going. He said, “Toda (thank you),” and then got out and started walking. At least we took him a few miles further along his journey.
Elah was also the area where Joshua commanded the sun and the moon to stand still while the Israelites battled the Amorites. They chased the Amorites to Azeka, which is a saddle between two hills on one side of Elah. In Azeka, the Lord killed more of the Amorites than the Israelites did. The Lord dropped stones (perhaps hailstones) on them (Joshua 10:10). We saw the sign to Azeka before we got to Elah.
We got out and walked the dry streambed there, looking for round rocks like David did. We found some, but not very round ones. Christmas presents for the kids back home.
Last year, there was a giant hothouse across the road in a field, but it is gone now. There were peppers plants about six feet tall in the hothouse last year. Now, the field had squash plants in it.
From there, we headed toward Bethlehem to see the Shepherds’ Fields. We drove through one Israeli checkpoint and along the roads. We weren’t sure how to get to the overlook by the Mars Elyas Monastery by the Fields and ended up driving to the Palestinian wall that cordons off Bethlehem. It was a metal wall about 20 feet high. A sign there said no Israelis were allowed. Logan asked if Palestinians were allowed in Israeli land. Yes, they are. They work pretty much everywhere in Israel, and many depend on this work to provide for their families. Don’t worry; we didn’t go near the checkpoint.
On the way back out, we saw a sign for the monastery and found the hillside near the Shepherds’ Fields. Unfortunately, the wind was really blowing, and the dust was flying, so we hid from it in a concrete culvert (or passageway) built for one of the wars. It was in front of some old concrete structures from the war years, too, that were falling apart.
But even in those conditions, we still considered the announcement of the Savior’s birth. We talked about how the scriptures record that the Wise Men came to the “house,” not the manger and saw the Christ child. They didn’t arrive on the night of his birth, which is why Herod the Great had the children two and under killed. When did the star appear, marking His birth? The scriptures say it was seen on the night He was born. So the Wise Men probably started traveling soon thereafter to find Him.
I imagine the whole host of heaven witnessed the birth, along with the angels who sang.
We went to a grocery store to buy food after our trip this morning. A box of name brand cereal was about $7. We passed on that, even though we are getting a little tired of the continental breakfast here at the hotel of bread, jam, peanut butter, nutella, cornflakes (the only cereal), tomatoes, zucchini, a creamy vegetable spread, etc.
Marla had emailed me that we could schedule a time for Logan and me to stand at the Western Wall, and she would be able to see us online on a webcam. Today, we arranged for 4 pm here and 9 am at home. At the designated time, we went there, and she, Makayla and some of the young women from Church (they were all at an early meeting) saw us at the Wall getting blown around by the wind.
It is just before 8 pm, and Logan is in and out of sleep. I must be working him too hard.

December 11, 2010—Saturday, Shabbat (Sabbath)
This morning before we got up, I lay in bed listening to the sounds—people arguing in the street and down the hall, people going to breakfast down the hall, a police siren, an ambulance going by, men unloading propane bottles (I saw them out the window later), and the wind howling. It came up this morning, and it blew so hard, it made our room door rattle gently. (Our door isn’t like the steel hotel doors at home. It is a thin, hollow door, and the key to get in looks like one of those old fashion keys with a circle of metal on one end and cut-our square of metal on the other. The door even has the old key hole.)
Logan was still sleeping (after taking a five-hour nap from 5 pm to 10 pm, then getting up and going down to the wi-fi room after I went to bed, and then he came in about midnight, took a Tylenol PM, and then slept to 8:48 am. I woke him up when I heard a crowd singing in the street. I looked out the window and saw a tour group holding a sign that said something about a pilgrimage from India. Near the front was a guy dressed in a Santa suit.
I started laughing and said, “There’s a Santa.”
 
Logan woke up, looked at his I-Touch and told me the time. I couldn’t believe it. I thought the sun had just come up, and it was about 6:30. I planned to leave at 8:30 to go to Church. I knew it would take us a while because the maps we have aren’t very good street-wise, and the last time, I was in a shuttle bus, so I didn’t know the way.
We dressed and ate quickly, grabbed some regular clothes and food for after Church and headed out. In the parking deck, there was a United Nations bus. We have seen several UN cars around in Jerusalem. Don’t know why they are here.
Finding Church became like “The Amazing Race.” We drove up near the Hebrew University because it looked like it was near there on the map. It wasn’t. We drove through a neighborhood, and Logan asked two older women if they knew where the BYU Jerusalem Center was. One did not know, until I told Logan to say “the Mormon University.” Then she knew, but she said it was close, but the directions were too hard (for her English, I think), so just like on “The Amazing Race,” she said, “Follow me. I will take you there,” which she did.
We made it with about 15 minutes to spare. Just like last time, there was a guard at the gate that let us into the compound.
It was a good Sacrament meeting. The BYU Branch Choir sang a prelude hymn and a Christmas song for the intermediate hymn. They were excellent, about 60 girls and 10 boys.
The students come here for one semester and study a language like Hebrew or Arabic, Near Eastern culture, a class like Jewish law/tradition, and other classes. There were 400 in this group, and they are leaving this week.
(Side note right now: we are watching a Thai movie, dubbed in English with Arabic subtitles, which is better than the Al-Jazeera channel.)
For those who will still be here, they are having a Ward Christmas activity at the Shepherds’ Fields where they will sing carols, have a spiritual thought, and refreshments, of course. What a great place to have a ward activity.
One of the speakers today was a brother who grew up in a Christian Palestinian family. He drove in from Ramallah this morning, which is in Palestinian control. He did not say how he joined the Church, but he did say he wanted to go to BYU after high school because his sister had gone there. However, he was turned down for a scholarship because his sister had gotten on the year before, and there was a rule against a family member getting that scholarship right after.
He really depressed about it because he had been offered scholarships from several colleges in different countries, but he felt he needed to go to BYU. He decided to accept a scholarship to a college in St. Petersburg in the Soviet Union, but his mother was not happy with that. He said his mother prayed and felt that he would be able to go to BYU. Within an hour, they received a phone call from the BYU Jerusalem Center saying someone had refused their scholarship to BYU, and they were offering it to him.
Just one thing, he had to be there in three days—but he had no passport, visa or luggage.
He must have made it because he graduated from BYU in engineering. He went on to relate how he eventually came back to Palestine to work. He was here for a while, but he felt he needed to go back to Provo to do something. He did go back, and there he met his wife, Emily.
The curtains were open during the meeting, but the city was hazy because the wind brought dust and salt in from the desert. We went out on the grounds afterwards, and we couldn’t see the Old City of the Dome of the Rock. Logan took photos of the three types of olive presses they have on the grounds. They also had rose bushes that are still in bloom.
After Church, it began to rain a little. We drove to the Mount of Olives and visited the Tomb of the Virgin Mary and the traditional Garden of Gethsemane. It was busy there with pilgrims.
The road up the Mount of Olives was very narrow, so we parked at the bottom, outside Mary’s Tomb. Then we climbed the hill. It was very steep and seemed a lot longer than the quarter of mile it was. Abraham was in the Garden cleaning it when we arrived. He remembered me, and we had a nice talk with him telling Logan about when he lived in America. It was his 70th birthday today.
It started to rain so he walked us over to his house to get olive oil he pressed from olives from the Garden. We had not spent any private time in the Garden, so we walked back and stood behind a large pine tree until the rain let up. Then Logan and I went back and spent some time there. The place of the Atonement is still a garbage dump, and a place where the garbage that is blown or rolls downhill is burned. Right on the spot where you can see through the evergreen trees to the Golden Gate/Gate Beautiful and where the altar of the temple was, is the dump. It is quite a contrast with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is a shrine with paintings, silver effigies, tile mosaics, and more. But like Marla said, the Savior would not want the Garden of Gethsemane to be a shrine.
After we left the Garden, we walked halfway down the hill, turned right into a little parking lot, and then walked down a paved walkway to the entrance of the Orson Hyde Park. Inside the unmarked gate is a monument identifying the park. It has a typo in it. The last line left out an “h” in the word “through.” Just a side note.
The stone walkway up to the stone amphitheater is a switchback for about a quarter mile. I told Logan today with all the stairs we went up yesterday, anyone coming here should work out on a Stairmaster to prepare before they come.
We made it back to the car, and it was okay, even though it has a “Budget” sticker on the side. After we drove back to the parking lot, it was not open yet. Still closed for Shabbat. One down the way run by Palestinians was open, and it was cheaper for the night.
One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, when we went to the Western Wall, a young man in an orthodox Jewish hat, black coat, white shirt and sideburns, said, “Hi, guys, where are you from?” After we replied, he said, “My dad is from Marietta, but I lived in Miami.”
He looked like he was happy to talk with us and had no problem identifying us as Americans.
One other thing, in the Church of the Flagellation, over the altar on the ceiling is a large crown of thorns. It is about six feet in diameter. It wasn’t painted on the ceiling but was a real crown of thorns. We couldn’t go up and look closer because a service was going on at the time.

According to tradition the church enshrines the spot where Jesus Christ was flogged by Roman soldiers before his journey down the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. I am going to tell Mike that he or Logan needs to stand int he picture so that we know that they were there and not just a picture from the internet.

Mural across the street from where Mike and Logan are staying it is inside the Jaffa Gate in the old city. This is new since we were there a year ago.

First day in Jerusalem

Picture taken from the top of our Hotel --The Old City night picture

December 10, 2010—Friday
At the end of the day, we almost ended up without food for the Sabbath and nowhere to park the car. We rushed out in the car at about 3 pm to go to a supermarket. We arrived almost an hour before sundown, but the supermarket was closed, as were just about all the other in Jerusalem. I had thought they would close at sundown for the Sabbath, but I guess they close early, a couple of hours early.
On this little jaunt, we also discovered that those far left lanes for going straight at a traffic light weren’t just for buses. It seems that the middle lanes that turn left in front of the left lane apply just about everywhere there are three lanes in town. Logan jumped out of the car at a light to check on a store he saw, and instead of being able to turn left and go pick him up, I was in the left lane that had to go straight. So I proceeded down the street for several blocks before being able to turn around and come back because those turning lanes and go straight lanes are often separated by a fence. Fortunately, Logan did not panic when it took me five or ten minutes to get back to him. He waited patiently on a corner.
It was after we headed back to park the car in the parking deck that we found out that the parking decks also close early for the Sabbath—even though they are entirely automated. They have pay stations where you insert your ticket and then insert payment. So we ended up driving around for a while, trying not to get lost. I thought I was going to have to spend the night in the car on a side street somewhere. We tried the parking deck for the David Hotel, but the cost was 12 shekels an hour, or about $3.50.
Logan solved the problem for us. There was a buses only parking lot by the car lot. He got the operator to let us park in the bus lot, which Logan said, he thought the guy does under the table. So we safely parked the car. We will take it out to tomorrow morning to go to Church, but we won’t be able to park it again until after sundown at 4:30 when the Sabbath has ended.
We were able to find some non-Jewish shops open to buy food in the Old City so we won’t starve on Sunday. We went to dinner in a restaurant, and the hotel has breakfast for us.
It was a little tense after a long day of walking. Logan said today was like opening a new area on his mission in Brazil. You walk all day long.
He was awake at 4:30 this morning, and after half an hour or so of his tossing and turning, I asked if he was awake. We both got up then and got ready to start the day. We went up on the roof to watch the sunrise and then headed to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. There were a few tour groups there by the time we arrived about 6:45. After an hour there in which we heard monks singing and saw a Eucharist, we came back to the hotel for breakfast. From there, we walked down to the Zion Gate on the south and went to the traditional place of David’s Tomb, an Upper Room, the Church of Peter and the Rooster (Caiaphas’ Palace), the Archaeological Park on the south temple wall, tried to find Annas House, the Western Wall, the Church of the Flagellation and the Condemnation where Jesus was put before the crowd by Pilate and scourged by the Roman soldiers, Stephen’s Gate (the Lion Gate) where Stephen was crucified, and then we walked through the Muslim Cemetery to the Golden Gate or the Gate Beautiful that led to the temple.
It has been a long day, but we heard they are expecting heavy rain on Sunday and probably Monday, so our touring may get cut short.
I am looking forward to attending Church tomorrow at the BYU Jerusalem Center.

First Day in Israel 2010

December 9, 2010—Thursday
We arrived at about 2:40 pm Israel time. A rabbi sat beside me on the way over. He had been visiting his parents in New York and was going home to Tel Aviv. We conversed a little, and I introduced us. He never told me his name.
I noticed that some of the orthodox Jews are winding their long sideburns around their ears, rather than letting them hang. But true to form, the rabbis on the flight got up and put on their prayer shawls to say their morning prayers. I did not see where they prayed; the plane was a 777 and was a double-decker with two flight crews.
We had no problems getting through passport control and getting to the rental car agency. But there, I found out Logan was too young to drive, so I had to do it. The cost for an economy car for eight days was $45. The cost for insurance with a $500 deductible was $200, and you are required by law to have insurance.
The drive to Jerusalem was not bad, a little have traffic on Highway 1 in places, but not bad. The car rental person told us that if we took Hwy. 6 which is a toll road, the car would be electronically billed for the toll, and the rental company would charge us another $15 for having to pay it.
Driving in Jerusalem was a mass of confusion. The roads meander worse than they do in the South, and it is very difficult to read the Hebrew road names. We got lost and right during rush hour traffic. While the drivers on the highway were not aggressive, in Jerusalem they are very aggressive. Cars nose out from side streets, people edge in from other lanes, you have to yield to pedestrians in the middle of the street, and some intersections have a confluence of roads. At one intersection, there was a bus lane on the left that went straight. We were in the lane to its right that only turned right. As we sat at the light, we wondered how that was going to happen at the same time. Then we saw the bus lane had its own traffic light. We turned in front of the buses while they waited at their red light.
Logan says it reminds him of the traffic in Brazil, except there are hardly any motorcycles dodging in and out of traffic. In Brazil, they were everywhere.
We really got lost in the city so we finally started asking people for directions. Some couldn’t speak English. Finally, a young lady in a car beside that was stopped in traffic gave us directions. We made it to the underground parking deck and then looked like big-time tourists as we rolled our luggage out into the shopping mall that separated the deck from the Old City of Jerusalem.
The New Imperial Hotel is undergoing some remodeling right now so it is not looking its best. The floors are tile, and the ceilings are high. It is a basic room, but I wanted the experience of staying in the Old City. I can hear soft music out our window and some street sounds. We have a small refrigerator and a TV that we haven’t figured out how to work.
We passed a bread seller on our way in the Jaffa Gate so we went back out and bought an elliptical loaf of sesame bread. It was really good. Then we went walking in the Old City to find the LDS souvenir shop called “Ali Baba’s.”
I bought six sets of leather scripture covers that were tooled with “Jerusalem” and the city scape for about $20 each. I also bought flat Christmas ornaments cut from olive wood with Nativity scenes for about $1.50 each. We both bought quite a bit of other stuff.
We are back at the hotel now, planning to get up around 6 am to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher tomorrow.

December 8, 2010—Wednesday
Today, Logan and I headed to Israel. Marla and I went while he was on his mission, and he emailed me then if I would take him, and I replied that I would. We started planning this when he got home, and it ended up that just he and I are going. Ethan had had enough of traveling with our going to Brazil, Utah and the Grand Canyon this past summer. Marla’s back wasn’t up to the trip again, so here we are.
I did not forget my camera this time so there were no emergency calls home. Marla drove us down, and we made it through the airport quickly until we got to the scanners at Security. Fortunately, we did not have to do the full-body scan, but some people did.
We fly to New York, JFK Airport, and then we take an overnight flight to Tel Aviv, getting in about 2:40 pm their time. They are seven hours ahead of us. We are renting a car and risking driving. Logan is set up to be the driver, and I will be the navigator. I am praying for safe travel. For all the places we want to visit, it would have been too expensive to hire cabs. We will be going to almost all the places on the first trip, plus a few others: the Church of the Annunciation, where the Angel Gabriel came to Mary and announced she would be the Mother of the Son of God; a Nazarene village set up like a village in the days of Jesus; Hezekiah’s Tunnel; St. Mark’s house; Annas’ house; and other places, I hope.
We will get in in time tomorrow to drive to Jerusalem, go to a grocery store, and check in to the hotel at about sundown, which is 4:30 pm. Sun up is about 6:30 so we have about ten hours of daylight each day. Friday, we will get up early to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Calvary is. I have read that the priest with the keys unlocks at 5:30 am, and around 6:30 is the best time to go when it is not crowded. When we went, it was crowded, so we want to go early. Our days will be packed. The next day, Saturday, we go to Church in the morning.