Tonight is our meal with the family in Bethlehem. We won’t get back until around 8:30PM local time. Today we had almost 10.000 steps in before lunch, and I have caught the cough that has been going through the bus. I cannot promise I will blog tonight, as there was SOOOO much we saw today, and I may need to go directly to bed when we get back. Not sure. I took over 400 pictures and over 50 videos, if that is any indication of the cool stuff we saw today!!! I promise to blog as soon as I am physically able!
NEXT DAY!
I’m back! I can’t say that I feel a lot better, in fact probably the other way around, but…thanks to some friends that were willing to share some DayQuil/NyQuil, I’m doing OK, and I have a little time yet to blog before I feel like I absolutely need to sleep. So! Backing up to yesterday for me…I’ll see how many of these I can crank out before I pass out!
Let’s start by talking about the beautiful weather we have been having! Thank you Lord, we have had absolutely STELLAR weather. Most days are really cool, cool enough for us to wear pants and longs sleeves, as many sites require. We have still only been sprinkled on once before we went on the boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, otherwise we have stayed dry. This is the sunset for Day 5, taken from Mount Zion.
One thing that I thought was kinda interesting…folks in Israel put their water heaters on the roof to save energy costs and paint them black to help the sun warm the water. I like it, great idea!
We had cheese pizza for dinner, in a restaurant near the US Embassy. I can honestly say, I would prefer Totinos that mom used to get us when I was a kid. The cheese was non-existent almost. It wasn’t good. The Schnitzel in a pita with French fries is still our favorite.
We got to shop today again in the store of one of Mike’s friends. I swear Mike knows half of the people in this country. Anyway, this shop is licensed to deal in real antiquities, and they have lamps from the first century like the 10 virgins would have carried. Really brings meaning to that story. You can have your own too, if you’d like, for around $500 on the low end. The antiques in this picture are real, and from the time of Jesus. So cool.
They also sold olive wood carvings and this one is easily one of my very favorites. A replica in olive wood of Solomon’s Temple. Wow, was that neat. I dealt with a little old man named George who called himself King George, so I naturally introduced myself as Queen Nancy. Yep, we liked each other right off. 
Here is another temple replica made out of metal near the Dung Gate where we entered the Temple Mount near the western/wailing wall, also very cool. More about where else we went later.
Here is a pic of how they would move stones easily over distances when building the temple…put them in wooden wheels and roll them around. Brilliant! I realize this is a little haphazard with the story telling, but I’m trying to share the cool, yet otherwise unrelated to a specific place, pictures.
There’s the Dung Gate pic.
And lastly, there is the pic of the front of the hotel we are staying at for 4 days in Jerusalem. Very nice place, good food, helpful staff. Really nice.
OK, next we need to do a few stops on Day 5, so let’s start with very early in the morning, wake up call at 5:45AM to beat the crowds in the Temple area. Well worth it…let’s start with the tunnels along the western wall of the old temple, since that’s what we did first.