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Published: January 28th 2011
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Another great breakfast and goodbye to our hotel on the Sea of Galilee. We started early today because it is the Sabbath (sundown on Friday through sundown on Saturday) for the Jewish culture and various places will close early. We will be spending the rest of our tour at the Olive Tree Hotel in Jerusalem.
Our first stop today was the ancient ruins of Beit She’an which is one of the most ancient places in Israel. Philistines and Canaanites ruled it and the Hellenists called it Skitopolis. In the Roman period it was the largest city in the regional alliance known as the Decapolis. The book of Sameul reports that after Saul and his sons were killed on Mount Gilboa their bodies were fastened to the walls of Beit She’an. An earthquake destroyed the city and the first excavations were started in 1921. By a team from the University of Pennsylvania. This place was unbelievable! You can certainly see the influence of the Romans. The theater could seat 7,000 and was huge. A public lavatory was uncovered…fascinating! There were columns, parts of sculptures, and floor tiles and mosiacs…..check out the pics.
Next we went to Nazareth and drove up
the Mount of Precipice. The view is unreal. I tried to tae a panoramic picture but you would have to take several of them to duplicate what we saw. You can see Nazareth, Mt. Tabor, and the entire Jezreel Valley - the most fertile valley in all of Israel. The pictures are wonderful!
Next we went to Meggido and the ruins. This city has been rebuilt 25 times…so there are 25 layers of cities from different time period. We saw Solomon’s stables and an amazing water system built in the time of King Ahab. If you want to learn more there is a book by James Michner called The Source which is based on Meggido. We had lunch here….a falafel/pita sandwich. Several people didn’t like it, but ai was looking forward to having falafel…it was delicious!!
From there we went to Caesarea and the ruins of this city on the Mediterranean Sea. I took some great pictures here of the ruins….looking out over the beautiful waters of the Mediterranean. We also got to drive by the Roman Aquaduct which was built to bring water from Mt. Carmel to Caesarea. It was six miles long and still is mostly
intact.
From Caesarea we drove toward Jerusalem and our hotel….we passed several sites including Emmaus…unfortunately there was just a split second to get a picture there and I was on the wrong side of the bus. When we went in to Jerusalem we went on a hill to overlook the city. It was exciting to have our guide point our several places that we would be visiting later in our trip.
We are now at our home for the remainder of the trip. We are all very tired and have an early day tomorrow…so good night all!!!
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mary jane
non-member comment
Very good