"The Bible Comes Alive!"

That's what they should change the name of our pilgrimage to. To see all the places that we've heard about all our lives is unbelievable. We are following Jesus' life and hear the stories and scriptures at each stop. It is truly inspiring. I feel very good. We have made friends with all 29 people in our group. The only thing left to do with them is to sing "Kum bi yah!" Maybe tomorrow.

We had lunch at this restaurant. They served exactly 2 sandwiches---nothing else---just 2 sandwiches---no chips or fries, just the sandwich. You had your choice of the "falafel" which is garbanzo beans crushed with spices, rolled into balls and deep fried served in a pita---or---the "shawerma" which is chopped chicken in a pita. As far as I was concerned, there was only one choice. That would be the chicken. It was just blah. I thought it would be like a gyro, but it wasn't. The people that got the falafel said it was pretty good. Still, I needed some chips on the side.

This is the difference between a $20,000 vacation and a $4,000 pilgrimage. There must be some sort of poverty thing associated with it. Only kidding. Just our luck, there happened to be a marathon being run the day we were to check out of our hotel in Jerusalem. All the streets were closed. Our bus couldn't get to us, so we had to schlepp our luggage to the bus---a 15 minute walk in the drizzle.

That's our hotel with the 2 towers in the distance. That's how far we had to walk. Don't think I made it seem further by just taking the photo---no, I used the telephoto lens to get it the exact distance from the bus! It was far---some downhill and some uphill.

 Camels are a pretty common sight---for the tourists to ride. They really are huge animals.

There were a lot of baptisms taking place in the Jordan River. See all the mud? Our priest---there in the black vest---just blessed us with the water.

Just one other thing. I found out that when people are rolling huge carts full of stuff and they need people to get out of their way, the universal word that everybody recognizes is "BEEP BEEP!"