Visiting Jordan & Israel

It just so happened that Rich had a business trip to Tel Aviv, Israel at the same time as the kids' Spring Break. So we decided to tag along! I must say I'm slightly embarrassed to post this blog, because we feel rather spoiled to have taken yet another trip to a really cool place. But the Middle East is really close to us here, sort of like taking a trip to New York from Utah, and about the same cost. Add in a free ticket for Rich and three free nights at a fancy beach hotel, and how could we pass up the chance?

Day One: Delhi to Amman, Jordan to Petra
Our flight left Delhi at 4am, so the kids slept a few hours before we left our house at 1:30 am, but Rich and I didn’t. When we arrived in Amman around 10am, we rented a car and drove south to Petra, through dismal desert towns and beautiful mountains and valleys. It was fun to imagine the children of Israel walking through it.

It’s very similar to Southern Utah in its topography. Our scenic drive took much longer than we had planned, so we didn’t arrive to our hotel until after dark, and stayed at a hotel in Wadi Musa next to Petra.

Day Two: Petra & Dead Sea
We went to Petra the next day, which was so amazing. It’s basically Zion National Park, but an ancient civilization carved greco-roman facades out of the rocks and caves to make a city. It’s spectacular. We rode horses into the park, then walked through this long corridor called the Siq, which is very much like the Narrows at Zion, but no water.


As you exit the Siq, you meet the most amazing sight--the Treasury carved out of a huge wall of sandstone. It's the one in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", except that there's a much smaller room inside than what is shown in the movie:
We rented a donkey midway through the day to carry our tired boys.
The donkey came with a delightful Bedouin man named Ali who turned out to be a great tour guide and gave us great insight into this hospitable indigenous people that live all over Jordan in tents. Ali and his donkey carried the kids who needed it up 800 steps to the gigantic Monastery:

Along the way, we found a spot where they were selling sand jars with your name written in sand inside. Isaac and Russell decided to spend their hard-earned good-attitude dinars on this fun souvenir:We wish we had been able to stay another day in Petra—we felt like there was so much more to see and explore there.



But this was a business trip after all, so we went back north. On the way we dipped our toes in the Dead Sea, which was surprisingly beautiful and clear:

Day Three: Madaba, Mt. Nebo, Bethany-beyond-Jordan, Fly to Tel Aviv
Since it was Sunday and we couldn’t find an LDS Church meetinghouse anywhere in Jordan, we decided to go to Mt. Nebo to do our own sacrament meeting, the place where Moses looked out for his first and last view of the Promised Land before he died or was transfigured. It was a little disappointing—too many crowds and too much haze to actually see the Promised Land, and there was construction and generators running to add to the noise. But then we moved on to Bethany-beyond-Jordan, a recently discoverd site where they believe Jesus was baptized and John preached, and we felt a nice spirit there.
It was so quiet and calm. Graham tried to swim in it, but luckily we caught him before he fell in!

We then flew to Tel Aviv, where we stayed in a super-fancy hotel (on business now!) on the Mediterranean Sea in Herzilya, just north of Tel Aviv. We had a wild taxi ride from the airport from a guy that barely spoke English, but turned out to be from Argentina, so I got to brush up on my Spanish. He said he had emigrated to Israel ten years earlier to escape the corruption of Buenos Aires and that he felt much safer in Tel Aviv. Isaac had a 24-hour flu bug that had started on the road to Bethany-beyond-Jordan, which produced many lovely vomit situations in transit, so it was nice to settle down in the hotel and let the staff there wash the linens after every vomit!

Day Four: Living the High Life at the Dan Accadia in Herzilya
Rich went to work the next day and we hung out on the beach and tried to eat without breaking the bank.
We found McDonald’s and a grocery store in a nearby mall, and that was pretty much happiness, together with the sandy beach and the playground (too cold to swim though—Russell kept telling us he was sucking in the cold to take it back to Delhi!). We were surprised at how modern and western Israel was, especially as compared to Jordan. Every place we travel I feel more convinced that we live in the craziest place ever though. Maybe I need to travel more to find something even more crazy. Maybe not.

Day Five: Nazareth, Haifa & Mt. Carmel
So the next day, I was going nuts knowing that we were a short drive away from millions of biblical places. So we rented a car and drove to Nazareth while Rich worked. I was scared to death to drive by myself in this place where most things are written in Hebrew, the cities themselves tend to be rather labyrinthine and I was still unsure about security issues. On top of that, Graham had caught the flu bug, so we said a fervent prayer, I gave Isaac the map and a vomit bag and wipes for Graham, and off we went. It turned out to be quite easy to get there, and Isaac and Graham handled the vomits quite well.
In Nazareth we only went to this place called Nazareth Village, which was a very nicely done re-creation of a farm during Jesus’ childhood.
The kids were totally riveted the whole time, and we learned so much about the symbols used in the scriptures—vines, sheep, shepherds, winepresses, olivepresses, scripture scrolls, synagogues, etc.
Our private tour guide, Rani, gave us nearly two hours of his time and was so sweet and patient with the kids.
I decided to skip all the other sites in the town because it was a pretty wild place, and Graham was still sick. Instead we drove through Haifa and Mt. Carmel on the way back home. Haifa had these gorgeous Bah’ai gardens and a domed golden tomb of a Bah’ai leader whose name escapes me. He saw Mt. Carmel and was so entranced by it that he asked to be buried there. We saw two brides come out of the gardens all dolled up like princesses—sort of like Temple Square, but much more glitzy! The drive back “home” from there was so beautiful with the city on the cliffs and the beautiful sea on the other side.

Day Six: Jerusalem
The next day we headed to Jerusalem, which was about 1 hour away, but it took about an hour to find the hotel and a parking place! Jerusalem was amazing. I hadn’t really internalized all the layers of people and history and religion that are embedded there until we saw it ourselves. My favorite people to watch are the Hasidic Jews all over. And tour groups from America and Europe everywhere. By the time we got out site-seeing it was 1:00, but we had time to see about all our stamina could handle in one day. Our first stop was the Garden Tomb.

Just outside the Tomb, a crafty and drunken pick-pocket pretended to stop someone from stealing something from our backpack and we believe took Rich’s cell phone out of his pocket. Oddly enough I just called the phone and talked to the fellow, who was still drunk and couldn’t understand that I wasn’t in Israel anymore. He said he needed the money. I hope he did. In retrospect, I wish I’d had the goodness in me to speak more kindly to him.
But thankfully, we were not yet aware we had been swindled until later, so we were able to fully enjoy the quiet reverence of the Garden Tomb, which was possible to feel despite the hordes of tour groups there. Then we walked around the Old City walls to the Garden of Gethsemane, which was beautiful and simple.
Then we entered the Old City, a labyrinthine cobble-stoned treasure trove which we repeatedly got lost in. We walked the Via Dolorosa, which was said to be the road Christ walked with His cross, and tried unsuccessfully to get in to see the Dome of the Rock (it was closed for the evening for Muslim prayers). Then we stopped on some steps by a playground for some snacks and ended up sharing the snacks with some local kids.
This seemed like a good situation until they started throwing dried tree nuts at us. We asked them to stop, they just kept throwing. A little eerie, so we left.

Then we made our way to the Western Wall.
It was a very spirit-filled place, especially right up next to the wall, where people came right up to the wall and prayed, sometimes inserting slips of paper with their prayers into the crevices of the stones. In some ways, though, it felt like a rock concert with all the Israeli youth dressed in black hanging out in groups all around and the rabbi announcing things on the loudspeaker. The Jews believe this wall was the western retaining wall of the Second Temple, the only remaining part of the temple after it was destroyed. So they consider it a holy place in absence of the actual temple, where the divine presence always rests. They divide the women from the men, so I had the opportunity to go over to the women’s side on my own and witness the fervent prayer happening there, and offer some of my own. I hope with all of my heart that someday we can all agree about religion and rebuild the true temple, or true temples all over the world and that all will recognize the power contained therein. The suffering and longing of generations of people is very palpable there.
From there we tried somewhat successfully to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but our friendly neighborhood guide brought us to the top of the church to look down through the windows and we couldn’t quite find our way to the ground floor of it. But by then everyone was pretty exhausted, so we wandered back to our hotel, and snuggled in one bed together with Graham in a crib, trying to rest up for our flight home the next day.

Day Seven: Tel Aviv to Delhi
We woke up early and drove our rental car back to Tel Aviv to go through the amazingly thorough security checks before we boarded the plane. We had a six-hour layover in Jordan, where they shuttled us to the Queen Alia Airport Hotel where we dumped our bags, had a cafeteria meal and lounged around our room for a few hours before heading back to the airport.
A few movies and video games later (okay, six hours of that), and we were back in Delhi. Rich and I sure enjoy having our own room again!
We felt so lucky to have a quick glimpse of the Holy Land to ground our future study of the Bible in some visual pictures of the lay of the land. A great blessing for me especially, since my brain doesn’t seem to retain history and geography well without a connection to a story or an experience. It ALMOST makes me ready to volunteer to teach seminary again next year so I could study and teach the New Testament in depth, but I think I better leave it to our new capable missionaries Bro. and Sis. Mickelson who have much more time and far fewer kids at home than I do.