Today is our final day with our tour guide; ami has been marvelous and taken us to many sites, not on our tour but that have been of great interest to us. We have valued his knowledge and understanding of the Christian story, and his wide network of people and places right throughout Israel. Today has been no exception! We visited the site of the house of Caiaphas the high priest of Jesus day, the site where Jesus was bought and housed as a prisoner before stan...

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 ...

Words fail me! It has been a highly emotional day as we have journeyed through Jerusalem on the Via Delarosa all the way to the traditional site of Golgotha. Right from the start, as we gazed across the Kidron valley from the mount of Olives we had a roller coaster ride of emotions. Words cannot describe what we felt. So I am just going to upload photos and put up some descriptions of them. It will take us a few days to process all of what we saw, heard, felt a...

Today we started with a detour! Our guide Ami wanted us to see the 2000 year old fishing boat that was discovered by two men walking on the shore of Galilee in a bad drought time. This boat is carbon dated to the time of Jesus and his disciples. They even found nails that were used in the boats construction. This boat was covered over and preserved by mud for two thousand years. What a great start to the day for a detour. Next we drove to a site of the baptis...

Today was on other big day of seeing the highlights of the Galilee region, culminating in a wonderful boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. We are told again that this fresh water lake is 212 meters below the level of the sea. Today is very hazy, hot and humid, somewhat like Cairns but only hotter and more humid, and that was at 8am!! We passed the village of Migdol, the home town of Mary Magdalene, on our way to the church of multiplication where Jesus took the loav...