After our staggered pick up, we were off to the Baptismal Site on the Jordan River known as Yardeni. It wasn't till we got there that the explanation came. "It's not the spot that Jesus was baptised, and we don't know where that is. However, so many people wanted to get baptised in the Jordan River, that we decided to build a spot where people could do it. Does anybody want to be baptised today?" Actually, nobody in our group wanted to be baptised, but we still got to visit the site, and it was really lovely. Probably a very special place for those wanting to be baptised, and there were many doing so, even so early in the morning.
There was a group from Tahiti having the full Sunday service on the banks, a group from Romania (who seemed more intent on feeding the cat fish until one of their number had to get baptised amongst them), a group from Brazil who decided to dunk their pastor at the end of it, and a group of upper high school kids from the USA who had about a dozen being baptised. Of course you could buy holy water to take home, but our guide just suggested that you fill your own water bottle. She knows we are cheap.
A bit up the road was Bet She'an National Park, which is another ancient city that has been dug up and partially restored. First begun about 5000 BC, it has around 20 civilisations built on top of each other. It was the city that the Philistines displayed the bodies of Saul and his sons on the walls of, and later became an administrative centre in Solomon's reign. It was the most important Roman city in the north of Israel during the Roman times (one of the Decapolis), some 35,000 people lived there during the Byzantine (Christian) period, and it has also been a crusader fort.
Long ago abandoned, it was only rediscovered by accident in the 1920's. It is well preserved, and while not as extensive as Jerash, it has a lot of lovely buildings, including the theatre, temples, bath houses, Cardo Maximus and hippodrome that every Roman city had.
Half an hour down the road we came to Qumran, the ancient community of the Essenes who are famous for writing the Dead Sea Scrolls and hiding them in the nearby caves about the time of Christ to keep them safe from the Romans. John the Baptist is rumoured to have spent some time here. The scrolls were forgotten until 1947 when some Bedouin shepherds stumbled on them, during the period that Jordan controlled the area. However, the discovery of most of the remaining scrolls in nearby caves happened after the Six Day War when Israel took back the area, so we have seen some fragments in the Jordan Museum, and will see the rest in a Jerusalem museum in a couple of days.
Lunch was in the Qumran restaurant, and then it was on to Jerusalem without stopping, which was a shame as we drove straight past Jericho, the oldest city in the world, Lazarus' village, and the Mount of Olives, though I think we go back to that one later.
An early check in for once, as we went off on a city lights tour of Jerusalem after dinner. The old city is open at all times, and the walls of Jerusalem and significant buildings are floodlit at night, so it was very pretty and very impressive. We saw some of the shopping areas, the centre of the city, and drove through some alleyways that are the home of the most fundamental of the Jews. We couldn't get out of the bus there or we'd get stoned. We stopped at a number of vantage points to take in the scenery and take some pictures, though it wasn't as easy as it would normally be as there are police everywhere and lots of roadblocks erected due to the funeral tomorrow of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
We finished our tour by visiting the Old City, and entering via the Dung Gate to see the Western (Wailing) wall. It was lovely to see the prayers going on late at night, and the diversity of the various jewish believers. A really fun night.
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