Arm-a-gettin

Wow. So it has been several days since I have posted. We left Thursday the 16th at 4 am. We traveled for 27 hours total and arrived in Tel-Aviv Friday night just in time for an incredible dinner.

Travel Story:
Think "Home Alone" except with our luggage. My families bags were not checked through our 3 flights like we thought, so when we flew into New York, before our flight to Madrid, we had to RE-CHECK our bags and go through secuirty again. What a disaster. We literally made our flight by 10 minutes. God is good. The horrible part is not about my family though. Everybody else who *thought* their bags were check through to Tel-Aviv found out at our transfer from Madrid to Tel-Aviv that they had no bags. The bags were lost! 14 people with no bags out of our gruop of 38. What a disaster...they were finally recoeverd today though....

Anyways, on to the good stuff!

So last night we spent the night on the coast of the Meditteranean Sea in Tel-Aviv, which is the Vegas of Israel. The place rocks. It is a busy modern city that also has the climate of a mild San Diego. The beaches are groomed by tractor every morning. I could throw a rock from my hotel balcony into the Sea....it was incredible. 5 Star hotel with the most amazing food ever. A huge buffet with everything you could ever want from the Middle East!

After we checked in and had dinner a handful of us made a trip down to the beach around 9pm local time. The beach was still busteling with activity - especially this one beach restaurant. My brother and his girlfriend Katie are of drinking age in this part of the world, and my brother had never had an alcoholic beverage before, so we made a big deal of getting drinks together on this small slice of beach paradise. What a great time....

Today was techinically day 3 of our journey. I'll post my agenda for the trip soon - promise.....

Today we piled into our bus at 7am after a lush breakfast buffett and headed north from Tel-Aviv towards the Valley of Armageddon. We spell it differently then the locals, but i'll leave that alone for now. We visited Nazareth, the home town of Jesus, and got to experience the culture of Nazareth in a refurbished part of town. The towns here are (much to my ignorant surprise) very advanced....well sort of. Nazareth during Jesus time had approximatly 400-600 people living in it, with a small synagogue that could seat around 150. I sat in a replica today. The town now is much much larger - maybe 50,000 people? It looks like a dressed up version of Ensenada though - much poverty and sort of a dusty-old feel. But it was nice just the same.

We also learned a lot about the valley of armageddon. It's very intense. The valley is about the size of the 680-corridor valley - maybe a mile wider at points, and a bit flatter, but all in all it looks the same: very good vegitation, etc. I learned that the valley has two roads that were used in ancient times, and that these roads were the object of much affection - meaning many wars were fought for control of these roads. Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Orient all interesect at these roads, and so those who controlled the roads in this valley controlled the trade routes and the "bridge toll" of taxes in the land.

We went to one of the forts built by Solomon (among others) to defend these roads. The fort's name starts with an M, and is essentially the word that makes up the second half of ar-Mageddon, although it is not spelt that way, etc....but the meanings hold over. This fort has been destroyed and rebuild 25 times. 25 times! This is the fort that the Bible references as the place where Solomon had his 450 horses and chariots, etc. I saw the feeding trophs with my own eyes from 3000 years ago! Wow, does it come to life! Nazareth is 10 miles from this place. We went inside the fort and saw a sacrifice altar of Solomon, and the we got to walk through a HUGE tunnel where they used to get water from a spring out of. They dug this tunnel for more than 40 yards through solid stone. Absolutely amazing.....

We also got to visit the Sea-side palace that Herod built - yes the bad Herod we all don't like much. Man did he know how to throw a party. He had a natural pool sea-side, 2 race tracks for chariots or gladiator fights, and an incredible theater we got to sit in. Truly a beautiful place...

Anyways, more soon. Here are some pictures!