John 11:18

"Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off" John 11:18 NASB

So I haven't been to Bethany or where it was, but I thought this verse was great because I live about 2 miles from the old city.

We are very thankful that I have been able to come on some trips with Shawn. The tours we have gone on have been with the school and they weren't quite sure they were going to let me go because I wasn't a student at the university. But they eventually said ok and we paid for four tours: Practical Jerusalem, Western Wall and tunnels, Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and the last one was last Wednesday, Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea. The Practical Jerusalem tour showed us a public library, the Jewish Shuq (market), and some popular bars in the Ben Yehuda area of the new city. There is one bar popular with Americans called "The Yankee". Since then we have had some really good gelato in that area. Here is some interesting action while on the practical tour:
He was diligently concentrating.

The Western Wall tour was our favorite one so far. The tour started at 8:30pm so it was nice and cool as we walked from the Jaffa gate to the Jewish quarter of the old city. Our guide was excellent and he gave us a sweeping history of the old city and showed us some of the Cardo (Roman road in the center of the city at that time), and parts of Hezekiah's wall that they have uncovered while rebuilding the Jewish quarter. It was fascinating to see how they just have to go down to uncover amazing history. The further down you go, the older it is. At 11pm it was time to start our tour of the Western Wall tunnels with an archeologist as our guide. Our camera didn't like the dark so I recommend seeing a few here. I barely got a picture of the model of the second temple:

After such a great and informative tour of the Western Wall tunnels we were expecting some great things from Jaffa. Jaffa is mentioned serveral times in some letters that were written from the land of Canaan in the 14th century BC, and is the only natural port in the land of Israel, and a very important area for this town. Unfortunately, our guide was far more intrested in the soap-opera surrounding some of the houses, then actually giving us information, so will have to go back after reading more about the town.





Above is Shawn at the very old town of Jaffa (near Tel Aviv), also a historic port. It's called Joppa in the bible. One of the things we saw is a church to memoralize that Peter had his vision of unclean food here (Acts 10). Here is the view looking towards the church from the beach (sorry its the best picture I got):



We also meandered through an early 20th century neighborhood between Jaffa and Tel Aviv (Neve tzedek, for more on community go here).




The next post will have the mount of olives. Stay tuned! שבת שלום (shabbat shalom: Blessings for your Sabbath)