We were due to arrive in Ashdod, Israel at about 7:00 a.m., but we were greeted early by an announcement from the captain. During the night, we had to stop our movement in the sea because we would have entered an area where the Israeli Navy was conducting live fire exercises (yikes!), so we were delayed by about 2 hours getting into port. Of course, that messed up the scheduling for all the excursions that were to have left between 8:30 and 9:00 this morning. Our excursion left at 11:00, which was 90 minutes late.
Ashdod is a very large industrial port and it was very active with the huge cranes unloading and loading shipping containers. Ashdod is about an hour from Jerusalem so all the excursions to Jerusalem started with a long bus ride.



I had been looking forward to our excursion titled, “Let’s talk: 1 state, 2 views.” Our guides were an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab. I expected that we would hear information about Jews and Arabs living in Israel, but none of that was presented. Our Palestinian guide didn’t arrive and we had to change our planned itinerary and find a way to pick up the other guide. Our Jewish guide, a tiny woman named Mozel Tov, was actually very informative and we both enjoyed hearing what she had to say.
We started our trip by going to Bethlehem. What a zoo that place is! It’s a little daunting because Bethlehem is controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank territory, and entering the city looks like going into a prison as there were high, razor wire covered walls with guard turrets. Mozel Tov prepared us for the possibility of being questioned by guards, but our entry went smoothly with no guards entering the bus.
Bethlehem, like most Israeli cities, is spread across hills, so you either go uphill or downhill. The traffic was horrible and we crept along steep streets. Today was very murky and so the views across the valley were hazy and you couldn’t really see much. The big draw in Bethlehem is the Basilica of the Holy Nativity, which is the site of Jesus’s birth. The bus parked in an underground parking garage with about 200 other buses. All along the walls of the parking garage were shops with hawkers practically in your face trying to get you to buy whatever they were selling. It was crowded, noisy, smelly from the bus fumes, and very confusing. We did meet up with our Palestinian guide, but he was a big zero in terms of any information. He really didn’t have much to say.

We walked out of the parking garage and uphill in the street to the Church of the Holy Nativity along with hundreds of other tourists. At the top of the hill was a very large limestone church having many newer additions (still centuries old). Right around the main entrance area were two minarets from neighboring mosques. Everything in the Holy Land section of Israel is a mishmash of religions and this is part of the struggles amongst the peoples. Who should control?


I remember Carol telling us about a visit she made to this church many years ago, but all she remembers is that she banged her head either going in or coming out of the church entrance. I’m glad she told us that because you do have to crouch down and enter the church by a very small opening where you could easily bang your head. The entrance is called the “Door of Humility” because you do have to stoop low to enter.


Inside the church is a long central space bordered by columns. There’s a big lineup to one side for those wishing to go down to the grotto where they think the site of the manger stood. We didn’t have time to do that. The areas above the columns had beautiful golden mosaics. The chancel area was covered with gold and there was a group of women polishing all the gold, which was a big job for sure.










On the way out, we stopped to look at a sculpture of St. George killing the dragon, apparently a very famous piece of art.

Back in the parking garage, we couldn’t find our bus among the 200+ buses and Mozel Tov took off trying to find our driver. The driver had a habit of disappearing and not being where he was supposed to be. Back on the bus, we stopped at St Michael’s store, which I guess was a required part of the tour, but I don’t think anyone from our group actually bought anything.
We then drove to our lunch stop which was at the Olive Tree Hotel in Jerusalem. That took an hour and with all the Jerusalem traffic, we didn’t arrive at the gate into the Old City until about 4:00. We did go by very familiar territory where David and Carol took us. We saw Gethsemane Basilica and St. Mary Magdalene Church on Mt. Olive, the Tomb of Absalom, and the very large Jewish cemetery. We then left the bus and entered the Old City via the Dung Gate.



Our first stop was at the plaza in front of the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall. The Western Wall has been the center of Jewish yearning and memory for more than 2,000 years. It is the only fragment of the great Temple that survived the Roman destruction. It is said that the Divine Presence has never departed from the Western Wall. It is the most sacred structure of the Jewish people. The approach to the wall is divided, men on one side and women on the other. The women’s side is smaller and much more crowded. As you get closer to the wall there are loads of Jews reading their bible, rocking, praying, some crying. Many people are inserting small scraps of paper with prayers or messages written on the paper into the cracks between the stones in the Wall. Once you place the message into the Wall you are supposed to place both palms on the Wall and “feel” whether your prayer will be answered. I must say it was an amazing experience to be in the middle of this sacred space.







We then walked through some of the Jewish quarter of the Old City and then into the Muslim quarter. The market shops were all in full swing with lots of efforts being made to talk us into buying something. It was quite a hodgepodge of food shops, souvenir shops, household goods shops and everything imaginable that you’d want to buy.





We joined up with Via Dolorosa, the route that Jesus walked carrying his cross on his way to his crucifixion. There are 14 stations of the cross, nine along the route and five within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. We passed several stations of the cross on our way to the church.



Via Dolorosa goes from the Muslim quarter to the Christian Quarter and ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the site where Jesus was crucified and once dead, was taken down from the cross and laid on a stone and prepared for burial in the tomb. Some of the church is from Crusader times and within are multiple chapels and churches and religious processions of Orthodox, Coptic, Franciscan, Catholic, and other sects engaged in religious activities. There are many rooms carved into the rock that have significance to Jesus’s crucifixion and entombment, and the stone of anointing, where he was laid down from the cross and prepared for burial is quite central to a lot of worshipers who were touching and kissing the stone. There is a large rotunda in the main church and under the rotunda is a freestanding chapel that is quite sacred to Eastern Orthodox sects. Again, it was quite an experience to be in such a sacred space. But as with all of the Holy Land, all of the important sites are mobbed with people and it’s difficult to really see and take in all that is there to see.












After the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, we continued on through the market streets in the Christian quarter and ended up departing through the Jaffa Gate, where David and Carol had taken us. We walked down to the parking garage where our bus was supposed to be, but once again, the bus was nowhere to be found and Mozel Tov had to go in search of the driver. We eventually found the bus and driver. By now it was dark and about 7:00p so we had been in the Old City about 3 hours. Everyone was tired after having climbed a lot of stairs and gone up and down alleyways in the Old City. One annoying thing was on the ride back to Ashdod, the bus driver talked nearly the entire time on his phone in a very loud voice. Of course, he was speaking Hebrew so we didn’t know what he was saying, but it was rather rude, I thought, of him talking so loudly and for nearly an hour.
At any rate, we got back to the ship at about 8:00p which made for a long day. Although I was disappointed in terms of what I expected from the tour, we did get to see several really important sites and experience a lot of the Old City.

We’ve decided to not do a tour tomorrow and we’ll be staying on the ship. Thursday is a day at sea which means no Internet connection so I won’t be doing any blogging for a few days. Friday is a stop in Santorini but we don’t have anything planned. And Saturday is back to Piraeus, disembarkation, and a long flight to JFK. This week is going by quickly!