Today was another great day, but not as emotionally charged as yesterday. We started our day by visiting Ein Karem, the birthplace of John the Baptist. It is a beautiful drive west of Jerusalem.

We arrived and took a leisurely walk up to the Church of the Visitation where Mary went to see her cousin Elizabeth, who greeted her with the words, "blessed art thou amongst women". It is a very beautiful church looked after lovingly by Franciscan Monks, we chatted to one monk who we found mopping the marble floor at the entry to the Church.

This church is also reputed to be the birthplace of John.

After leaving this beautiful little valley we traveled back to Jerusalem to the Israel Museum where there is on display a miniature of the old Jerusalem. We took our time here and listened to Ami explain how the city had grown over time from king David's time to the building of the temple to the days of Jesus. Looking and listening helped us understand this amazing city much better and get a real sense of where everything is and why the city is the way it is.

In the same complex is the museum that holds the Dead Sea scrolls, and this has to be the most amazing place, showing the way the community lived at Qumran & how and why they transcribed the scriptures. To see artifact and pieces of the scroll was awesome.

After this we were taken for a real treat to the Jewish market place on Ben Yudah street. If you know the old Sydney fruit market you have a small sense of what it was like, only with many more Jews! We had lunch here, a traditional soup with semolina balls with meat inside. We walked through and around the market and saw fruit and veggies, sweets (yum!), bread of all kinds, plenty of olives and oil, cheeses, meat, fish, dried fruit and much, much more, for us it was a very special time, a gift from our guide.

We then drive to Bethlehem, but had to leave our guide for several hours because this is Palestinian territory. We met our driver who took us into Bethlehem to pick up our guide for Bethlehem, I cannot spell his name but it sounded like Ni-Al. He was very good indeed and showed us to the shepherds fields and the little chapel set in a cave, that was a special place.

From here we drive across town to the Church of the Nativity. On the way our guide was telling us about all the motels in tow, 29 I think he said, but also added that many times during the year when pilgrims come to the city there is never enough room; so things have not changed in 2,000 years!

The church of the nativity is built over the tomb of St Geronimo. And under the altar in the grotto is a silver star, with 14 peaks, this is the place of the birth of Jesus. Unlike many other places we have seen this is said to be the actual spot where Jesus was born. Right from the third century there has been a church over this spot, and early day Christians worshiped here making this spot authentic, so they say! It's not hard to believe, this is a very old church built over the original church in the fifth century AD.

There were hundreds and hundreds of pilgrims here. So many that our guide said it would take 2 hours of standing in line to see the cave where Christ was born; so he ushered us around the other side of the church and spoke to his friend, a police officer in charge of crowd control and we were allowed to slip into the grotto and a way was cleared for us to kneel and touch the star, while the guide took a photo, we also were ushered to the site of the manger and given special privilege in that place. How important we felt, but how sad we felt for the people still standing in the line!

From here we traveled to a local gift shop, run by local Christians who are selling the most beautiful hand carved olive wood. Statues and manger scenes and last supper scenes, all very beautiful and expensive too.

From here we were driven to meet Ami our guide and bought back to our hotel for another nights rest.

Tomorrow is our last day with our guide. We will be heading up to the garden tomb and a few other highlights. But more about that in our next blog.