Departing from Jerusalem today so met at 7:20am this morning to get bags into the bus and we got away at 7:35am. This is the first day we got some proper rain and the sky was quite an unusual colour. Took about one hour to get to Jericho where we visited Hisham’s Palace. This is an Islamic archaeological site from the 8th Century. It was destroyed by an earthquake. It is famous for it’s intact mosaic “The Tree of Life” but we were not able to see it. In fact all the floors were covered by cloth and dirt so we couldn’t see any mosaics at all. However it was still very interesting and one of the rooms had multiple columns reminding me of Luxor temple but on a much smaller scale. We then had a ... read more

Started off today at 7.45am for our day trip to Bethlehem which is situated in the West Bank. This is the area that DFAT on their Smart Traveler website has listed as "Reconsider your need to travel". I understand the reasons for this but we are so glad we went because we actually felt good that we were contributing in some small way to the Palestinians who live here under some difficult circumstances. Before that however we had a couple of stops. First was a viewpoint overlooking the Mount of Olives where we had a marvelous view of Jerusalem and then a short drive to the Garden of Gethesame, where the Bible says Jesus and his disciples spent the night before the crucifixion. Next to the garden is the Church of All Nations, which is also ... read more

Opportunity to sleep in today but still woke up early at 7am. We took our time showering, packing and having breakfast and checked out of the hotel around 10:15am. Short walk to what we thought was our Intrepid tour hotel, Holy Land but it turned out it was another Intrepid group booked, not ours. There was conflicting information in our tour notes, so I was half expecting this. Anyway, the Holy Land people were good enough to call the Azzahra Hotel to check that we were booked in there and sure enough we were. Fortunately just another short walk to the Azzahra. It was too early to check-in so we just left our bags there and asked the very nice lady at reception how much it should cost for a taxi to The Israel Museum. She ... read more

Went down for breakfast at 7am and met up again with Mary, Paul and Susan. We had an 8am taxi pick-up and were a a little late but all good. Unfortunately we didn’t get the nice young driver from the night before but an older man who we found difficult to understand. He ended up stopping twice for water and then petrol and then he asked if we wanted him to take us to a bazaar but we politely told him that we just wanted to go straight to the border. The border crossing wasn’t as bad as we imagined, seems like they have streamlined it. I read that at one stage they take your luggage at the start and you don’t see it until the end of the procedure but in our case the bags ... read more

Left Petra at 8am for our return trip to Amman but with a few stops along the way. First was Little Petra which is set in a small valley not far from Petra, but also built by the Nabateans. It is believed that it was like a suburb of Petra and housed traveling traders on the Silk Road. This was a very interesting site in itself and if situated anywhere else in the world would be a much bigger deal in itself Next stop was the Crusader Castle at Shobak, where Lana told us about it but just made it an option if anyone wanted to explore the castle itself, which entailed a 15 minute walk up a steep hill. Barry, Pierre, Mary, Paul, Brian and I elected to go and we had about 20 minutes ... read more