We are back and our trip to Israel, Jordan and Egypt was fantastic, educational, exhausting, and spiritual. It was a life changing experience. I'm going to try and share it with you a little piece at a time. We left Salt Lake City at 11:00a.m. Saturday Oct 26th and arrived in Amman Jordan about 4:00p.m. Sunday Oct. 27th. A lot of hours on a plane; especially if you have long legs.
We stayed at the Jordan Valley Marriott Resort and Spa. It is located right on the Dead Sea. So our first experience was swimming and wading in the Dead Sea. The resort was extra beautiful, super clean and comfortable. The food was good, though we were warned that in Jordan and Egypt we should not eat anything that hadn't been cooked which made the beautiful fresh fruit and vegetable salad tables off limits. :(
On Monday we crossed the border into Israel. The only evidence we noticed about heightened tension between these countries was the difficulty crossing their borders. It took us four hours to go a very short distance. Most of that time we were just sitting on the bus at the border. Also a long time for people with long legs. :)
We were on our way to Masada where Herod built an amazing rock fortress on top of a high
plateau. A group of Jewish zealots Sicariis made their last stand against the Romans on this site. They valued their freedom and the right to worship their God. They held out against the Romans for three years and ended up taking their own lives rather than live as slaves under Roman rule. If you haven't read about this story or seen the movie "Masada" starring Peter O'Toole I'd highly recommend that you do just that. It is an amazing piece of history and visiting this site made it very real. (I'll add pictures soon)From Masada we then went to Tiberius but that's enough for today.
