The Oldest City and the Holy City

So last Monday as we were walking to class Sam asked me out of the blue if I wanted to go to the West Bank. What else was I to say but "um. Of course"?? We did a little bit of planning, decided out what cities we wanted to go to, a rough guideline of what we might like to see in each city, and figured out what buses we would need to take to and from and between these places and then set out Thursday morning for the West Bank!

We took the early bus to Jerusalem, so that we could stop at one of the greatest places in the city before catching our next bus: Holy Bagel. Now none of us had had a bagel since we left the states, so a good 3 months ago. For me, the girl who had a bagel about 4 times a week when I was home over the summer, this was quite a long time to go without a good bagel. It wasn't the best bagel I had ever had, probably because I had high expectations, but it was still pretty wonderful.

Nice and full on our bagels, we head out to the Damascus Gate to hop on one of the Arab buses that would take us to Bethlehem. Once in Bethlehem, we left just about right away for Jericho with the taxi driver that gave us the best price who ended up being a really awesome guide for our time in Jericho, driving us between all the important sights and then back to Bethlehem that evening. So. Jericho. The Oldest City in the World, apparently.

Our first stop was Tel el-Sultan (Sultan's Hill), the site of many archeological excavations, finding layers and layers and layers of civilizations all built upon each other, dating back about 10,000 years. The excavations were awesome, despite the crazy heat out in the middle of the desert. There were also a bunch of stray dogs lounging in whatever shade they could find in the hills of the excavation, Abby and I didn't want to do anything but play with them they were just so cute! The Tel was at the base of what supposedly was the Mount of Temptation where Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert before being challenged and "tempted" 3 times by the devil. We had wanted to take the cable car up to the top of the Mount simply for the amazing views that it would offer us of the entire surrounding area, but it didn't seem worth the 55 shekels so we decided to skip that little detour.

 Mount of Temptation

 Ruins overlooking the rest of Jericho

The many layers of excavation/settlements at the Tel

Next stop was Hisham's Palace! This palace, bath house, and mosque belonged to a Muslim caliph from the Umayyad Period a long, long time ago. The greatest thing about this spot was the restoration and quality of the ruins. Many of the columns looked perfectly in tact with no restoration, and pieces of artwork were pieced together based on other examples of typical artwork from the period and completely restored. Despite not really being able to see many of the mosaics through the gates they put up, it was clear that they were extremely beautiful. One of the mosaics, which I wish we could have actually seen, was the famous Tree of Life mosaic, with a large tree in the center, on one side of the trunk are two deer "gracefully nibbling greens" and on the other side a lion devours a deer showing the dichotomy of life and death, peace and war. The ruins were pretty extensive, so it was a bit of an adventure wandering through the site seeing all that we could see.

What the Tree of Life mosaic supposedly looks like...

 Entrance to the Palace area

 Little Cat hates Bananas...

 Restored artwork in the ruins

Nothing but love

Next stop: The Sycamore Tree! So apparently this tree, approximately 2,000 years old, is THE TREE that Jesus sat under before heading up the Mount of Temptation I mentioned earlier. Not unless I'm missing something, this timeline doesn't exactly make sense. Yes the tree is about 2,000 years old and Jesus lived about 2,000 years ago but wouldn't that make the tree pretty tiny 2,000 years ago and not a great tree for Jesus to sit under for shade? I'm no botanist or whoever it is that studies trees, but that's just what I think. Regardless it was a nice tree and in front of a really beautiful but unidentifiable building.

 Said unidentifiable building

Said sycamore tree

So that exhausted all of the important sights in Jericho, and we returned to Bethlehem. Our driver was awesome, leaving us at the Church of the Nativity and giving us great directions from the Church to the hostel we were staying at that night since we really had no clue where it was. We parted ways and went to the Church of the Nativity. From the outside this church was really simple and beautiful, with what seemed like a lot of pilgrims from mainly Hispanic countries (we heard a lot of Spanish, possibly Portuguese...). But from the inside, it was like no church I had ever seen, except for maybe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There were ornate lamps all over, paintings on the walls, and a HUGE mass of peopled lined up to go see the Milk Grotto. Rul Cray. There were lots of gilded things, tons of gold and silver, and just a lot of over the top things. Next to the main entrance sanctuary area was a beautiful little side church that was a lot simpler and led down to the caves beneath the churches where Joseph was supposedly visited by the angel who told him to take Jesus and flee to Egypt to avoid Herod's wrath.

 Church from the outside

 Uncovered Mosaic in the middle of the floor

 SO MANY LAMPS

Beautiful underground window/lamp

After seeing just about everything in the church, we head back to our hostel, relaxed a little before heading out for dinner and some narghilla before crashing super early. We knew we'd be getting up relatively early the next day to see everything in Hebron before having to head back to Beer Sheva before Shabbat started and we were stuck. All in all a great day, blog post about Hebron coming when I get out of class...