Israel, Days 10-11, Ein Gedi, The Dead Sea, Masada, and Eilat.

After an overnight stay at Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov, we headed south a little ways to the small city of Beit She'an on day 10. The city of Beit She'an is located just above an ancient city of Beit She'an, a former Roman empire city.

We entered the site and immediately saw the incredibly enormous size of the city. According to the census by the Romans that year there were about 50,000 citizens. The Romans, built all of their new cities with the same general plan, they made a North-South running road called the Cardo--the heart line road, and an East-West running road, called the Decumanus--the 10 workers line. It isn't known why these streets were called this, but that's what they're know by.

The city of Beit She'an (ancient). The street you can see is the Cardo--the heart line. The columns on either side were to support a roof over the adjacent sidewalks that led past shops and merchants.

The streets were often set up so that the city could be surrounded by walls and fortified so it was easy to defend, and each end of the 2 main streets was to end at a gate on one of the 4 city walls. These gates were entrance and exit points of trade for the city. People would then go to the city center or the acropolis to trade, buy, and sell their goods. Since the acropolis was built way upon a hill in Beit She'an, they lines of the main roads don't intersect at the top of the hill but at the bottom, so a city center was built which housed shops, contained sidewalks and streets, much like what a downtown might look like in America today.

Every Roman city also had a public bath house, since the Romans were obsessed with their cleanliness, they built massive public bath houses for places for people to bathe and keep themselves clean. There were extremely large rooms for saunas, hot baths, and pools. The first room was enormous and had walls that were 3 feet thick. They walls held the heat from the saunas in. The heat for the saunas was pumped in with massive blowers by slaves who blew hot air from furnaces under the floor of the sauna, this would then heat a large bowl of water.

The floor supports that left air room under the floor to allow hot air to be blown in, usually by animal or slaves. The hot air was blown in from the furnace, which was outside the sauna room through the small passages on the left wall.

After condensing on the ceiling, the water would wash down the walls into cisterns that would put the warm water into a large hot tub that had 'jets' usually human or animal faces that shot water out of their mouths onto a person's head or shoulders--like a modern jaccuzzi tub.

After we toured Beit She'an, we got back into the bus and we headed down the road to the Dead Sea. We drove along the sea and listened as our tour guide Amir explained to us about the Dead Sea Scrolls, their discovery and their eventual collection.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves around the Dead Sea in 1947. Shortly after having found a couple large pots with scrolls from the Torah in them, the Bedouin tribes that live in the area moved into the surrounding caves and raided the scrolls. Thinking they could harvest a lot of money from them, the Bedouins ripped the scrolls into tiny pieces and sold them to people all around the world. This created a nightmare for the people who had to reassemble them and try to decipher their meanings.

The majority of the Dead Sea scrolls were found in this cave. Located just steps away from the archaeological dig of a monastery that was supposed to find them. This cave was invaded by the Bedouins and the rest of the scrolls inside were taken and ripped apart to be sold world wide.

In the 1950's through the 1980's the Dead Sea Scrolls were slowly bought or gifted back and pieced back together to help try and decipher what it was these scrolls were saying. It was eventually found that they scrolls were original prints of the books of the Torah. We stopped for a while near the Dead Sea to have a look at the sight where they found the most Dead Sea Scrolls in one cave.

Then we drove all along the Sea to the town of Ein Gedi to stay overnight.

Today, we woke up at about 6 am in order to leave the hostel at 7am. Our plans today included heading to Masada, which is a very tall mountain that is near Ein Gedi. It is the location of an old, old Roman/Jewish city. King Herod chose this place, on a relatively flat mountain top, to be his palace because it was nearly impossible to penetrate.

The faint path you can see zigzagging up the side of the mountain is the path we took up. It took me 50 minutes to go up and 20 minutes to come down. What a great way to start the day... with an intense uphill work out! :)

It takes about an hour or a little less to hike up the side of the mountain to the top, and about 20 minutes to a half an hour to get back down again. I could have taken the cable car but 1) I wanted the exercise and 2) I didn't want to pay $15 to get up there, when I could do it for free.

We spent roughly 2 hours on Masada touring around. Afterwards we headed to the Dead Sea to go for a little swim. :) The Dead Sea is the most saline body of water on earth, it's also the lowest point on earth (1400 feet below sea level!). People with asthma can breath easier because there is more oxygen the lower you go on earth, and the salt water helps people's muscles and joints because it contains bromide, a commonly used substance for tranquilizing.

Me floating on the water! It's weird by it feels so good in the sun!

When you enter the water, you can immediately feel the difference between this water and normal lake water. This water almost feels like you're walking into a giant lake of olive oil, it's very slippery and greasy. It's good for your skin though, I can attest that I don't think I've ever felt my skin as soft as it is today! :D

After this short trip, we went headed our way down to the city of Eilat, the southern most city in Israel, and a large sourthern port. On our way there, we took a detour to the border with Jordan, which is interesting because it's not hardly fortified at all... all there is, is a small barbed wire fence that looks no different from a common barbed wire fence used to divide land in America. But there are signs signifying the danger of the possibility of lost land mines near the border fence.

Hundreds of greenhouses line the Negev Desert and grow crops year around. The greenhouses are completely computerized so as not to create any error in the cultivation the plants. Peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes are the main crops grown here.

Interestingly, Israel's largest agricultural region is in the Negev Desert in the south of the country. Irrigation and rich minerals help the plants grow quickly. The use of a mixture of aquifer water and salt water helps make produce more sweet as the plants over produce sugar to counterbalance the salt. A very creative and clever way to make your produce worth more!

After a short stop on the border with Jordan, we finally got to Eilat, where I have this view from my room, where I am sitting right now!

I hope you all enjoy these updates. I truly enjoy sharing my experiences with you all! :) Look for my next update soon!