Wow. It seems like just a few days ago we had another week left, and now we only have another day left. This has been a grueling and exhausting several days, but much fun and well worth it.
We started our day by leaving the Alexander Hotel in Bethlehem. Yvonne, Joseph, and Joey are wonderful, and I hope we can go back to see them some day. Joseph was so funny last night, coming to take me by the ark and usher me into his son Joey's place. I'd promised to buy something from Joey, although Joseph's brother (Joey's uncle) Johnny (whose gift shop is on the other side of the hotel) had a bigger selection and better prices. Anyway, Joseph ushered me into Joey's place and gave me a 50% discount. So I did a bit of shopping.
I've just come back from Amman's City Center Mall where I picked up another bag. I weighed my bag and it comes to 22.5kg. Since the weight limit is 23kg per bag for each of two bags, I decided not to make the mistake I made coming back from Senegal. Buying a second bag is cheaper than paying extra weight fees. When I'm older and smarter, I'll take two bags packed inside one. That will give me less of my own stuff and a second bag for souvenirs.
But I digress. After we left Bethlehem, we headed for Qumran. We'd seen an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls here in Jordan, and I'd seen the traveling exhibit in San Diego at AAR a few years ago, but it was a whole nother level looking at the actual caves.
We left Qumran and stopped at Ein Gedi, the Dead Sea. It's the lowest point on earth, and because of the salinity of the water, the flotation is amazing. In the commercials, you see the man floating in the water and reading the newspaper. It's really like that. I wore my goggles, but it is incredibly salty. Milton, Gail's husband, got some good pics of me. There's one where I'm just laid out on the ocean as if it were a table. What a great experience! The tide was coming in, and being so bouyant, it was hard to get my legs under me. It felt like I scratched up my butt on the rocks (and I forgot to take some salt), and I later found that I had actually scraped the top of my foot pretty nicely. It's been bleeding off and on all day. It doesn't hurt, it's just bleeding.
After the Dead Sea, we went up to the top of Masada. I'm not putting in the historical significance of most of these places because if you're interested, you can just Google the names. Great views from there. I took pics with my iphone and sent them to a couple of people I thought would like them. We could see the mountains, the Dead Sea, and desert all from the top of Masada. The cable car ride to the top was similar to the cable car ride to the top of Sugarloaf in Brazil, except that Masada only has one level.
After that, the group headed to Egypt said their goodbyes. They got into another van and headed south. We stayed in our bus til the Allenby (King Hussain) Bridge. Mike, our Palestinian driver, took us through the Israel departure. We went through Israeli customs, then had to get our bags and transfer them to a Jordanian bus. After about 500 yards, we had to then go through Jordanian customs, so we had to take all our stuff off the bus again, take them inside to let them go through customs, give the guide our passports so passport control could inspect them, then get back on the bus.
We were all tired and hungry by that point. Our guide said we could stop at a sandwich shop or he knew a souvenir shop that served free tea and cookies that would hold us over til dinner. We voted for the souvenir shop. It was ok in that we got to get souvenirs from Jordan, but I think we're all growing weary of jacked up prices and knowing that the drivers and guides are getting cuts for steering us into these places. Still, since I speak neither Hebrew nor Arabic, it's a workable solution.
When we finally got back to the Larsa hotel in Amman, it seemed like a palace compared to where we'd been staying! This place is lined in marble and mirrors, and has a little health club (a treadmill, a stepper, maybe an elliptical, and a multi-purpose weight machine), complete with sauna, steam room, and jacuzzi. The jacuzzi was HOT! and the steam room was really pumping! I hit them before dinner.
Dinner was wonderful. In addition to kebabs and a variety of salads, there was chicken, fish, and spaghetti. The presentation was nice (this is a hotel rather than a hostel) and after the last few days, it was quite welcome.
I would like to share some reflections, but tomorrow's another long day, and the day after tomorrow will be even longer, since we'll leave at 7:30 am for the States and I won't get home until nearly midnight.
But it's all good.
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