Petra

Having already gotten all the way to Israel, it made sense to take a few days to head over to neighboring Jordan for a visit to its most famous site, Petra (Greek for rock). Prior to visiting, the word Petra had made only an occasional blip on mind's radar, mostly in reference to a Christian rock band (I'm not sure whether they took their name from the place or the word), and also in a cultural reference much more widely known, the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It turns out that the hotels nearby also know about how Petra appears in an Indiana Jones movie, and the one we stayed at happened to have the DVD. It was a nice little bonus I suppose.

This is the most famous site at Petra, the Treasury (where Indiana Jones finds the Holy Grail). Perhaps it's so striking to me because it looks like how I would imagine a city that dwarfs build in fantasy books like the Hobbit (which I've recently read in French). Unlike the book though, there isn't a city behind the facade, only a few dark chambers. This fact, however, doesn't take much away from Petra's mystique.

This is the Siq, which leads from the entrance to the treasury. The Siq is a mile-long, 300-600 feet deep cavern formed as the result of an earthquake. It's quite an amazing walk.

Petra was built by the Nabateans, who got rich controlling trade routes between the east and the west. They were independent for 6 or so centuries before the Romans took over in AD 106 (however, the Greek influence is quite obvious). Water management was crucial, and the large tree that has grown in the cistern below shows how skilled they were at trapping water. It's one of the few large trees in all of Petra.

Lots of people visit Petra. In the picture below, you can see a bunch of them walking down the stairs to the Urn Tomb.

This picture is here because I like the formation. Petra made me really wish I knew more about geology.

There are a number of lovely hikes around Petra and my favorite was this one through a long, narrow cavern. Hopefully you can get some kind of idea of how beautiful the formations were from the picture. That's Gabe and Cara traipsing down the path.

Israel and the Palestinian Territories

We spent a week in Israel, enough time for me to get a taste of the place and enough time for me to know that I should go back someday for more than a week. It's a sacred place for three religions, one of them being Christianity, of which I count myself among the ranks. If you aren't too interested in Biblical or Islamic sites, Israel is probably not the place to go. As for me, I am, and that made the visit very special. I also have a friend going to medical school there, who, aside from being a pleasure to visit, knew his way around the place pretty well. He outfitted us with a map, a rental car, and "The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide", which was extremely helpful for understanding the sites and for drawing the line between tradition and archaeological evidence.

Even with the book, it was still hard to imagine what things were like 2000 years ago. And, of course, just a picture and a few words from me will make things even more difficult. I also didn't take a picture of some places because it just felt weird to me. For example, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (If you're curious, you can see what wikipedia has to say). Speaking of churches being built over purported historical sites, I discovered that pretty much every place of traditional significance has had a church built over it. This is good and bad I suppose. Good because the fact the early Christians built churches over everything increases the likelihood that they are the actual places, bad because my Western sensibilities would rather see things as they were originally. Anyway, hopefully my pictures and commentary will serve to give some idea of what it was like.

If I were reading this post, I would appreciate a map, so here it is.
My friend Johnny goes to medical school in Beersheba, which is quite near the Dead Sea. The day we arrived, he took an afternoon off and we made it there just after the sun went down. There was still enough light for a short swim in some very salty water. It was quite a sensation. Adding to the mystique was the Dead Sea's fame for being the lowest place on earth.

After Beersheba, we drove up to Galilee and found a place to stay in Nazareth. Nazareth is a pretty big place these days and doesn't actually have much for a Holy Lands pilgrim such as myself. I did make a quick stop at the Church of the Annunciation, built on the spot where Mary was visited by Gabriel. It had a number of lovely mosaics of the Madonna and Child, my favorite being the Japanese version, because it was a much different image than what I was used to.

Nazareth is pretty close to Capernaum, the town where Peter comes from. It situated on the North side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus spent quite a bit of time there teaching in the synagogue. It happens to be no longer inhabited, so there are some ruins to explore. There's been a spaceship-like church built over the site of Peter's house, which according to our Oxford guide, is "very probably" the actual place. If you go up in the picture from the spaceship-church (the picture's a photograph of a photograph), you can see the ruins of a synagogue built on top of the ruins of the synagogue Jesus would have taught in.

This is the Jordan River. It was smaller than I expected. It still would have been quite a feat to stop up and cross on your way to Jericho.

This is a pretty picture of the sun setting over the Sea of Galilee. It's entirely surrounded by nice, verdant hills.

These are military helicopters flying over the Sea of Galilee while the sun sets. It's much easier to see the present state of things, rather than how things were 2000 years ago.

This is a fish from the Sea of Galilee. How could it not be a descendant of the fish that the disciples caught and that Jesus multiplied?
After Galilee, we drove down to Jerusalem. We were lucky enough to be there for Easter weekend, which made it extra special. This is the view from the Mount of Olives. The most prominent feature is the Temple Mount, where the golden Dome of the Rock is built.

We got up really early Friday morning to participate in a Stations of the Cross service on the Via Dolorosa. Our Oxford guide said that there is no historical or archaeological evidence that they were the actual spots of the Passion (save the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), but that didn't keep the service from being very special.
Friday night, we went to the Wailing Wall for the beginning of Shabbat.
This is the entrance to the Dome of the Rock. Certainly a very beautiful building. I was going to try to go inside, but unfortunately it was the time for prayers.
We briefly ventured into the West Bank for a trip to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. The attention grabber was not, however, the church, but the wall surrounding Bethlehem on three sides. After visiting, it's hard not to feel like there is something quite wrong about walls fencing in places.
This is me with my friend Johnny just before attending an Easter Vigil in Jerusalem. Apologies for the attempting-to-look-cool smirk. Unfortunately, the big group picture from the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem didn't turn out. However, the blog still needs to have a picture of Johnny; and I think this one will suffice.

Trains and Planes

Before leaving France for my next major destination, Israel, I met up with a college friend, Cara, who decided to join Gabe and me for our travels this spring. She wanted to do a little WWOOFing in addition to traveling, so we decided to go back to Chateau Ribagnac (to see my previous post about the Chateau, click here). We spent a brief week there, doing some more gardening and enjoying some delicious meals with the Bergot family. All the same characters were there: along with the family, I got to see Patrick's parents again and got to visit Danielle's house. It was lack of space at the Chateau that made the time so short and as a result made a return to the Limoges train station (pictured below) come all too quickly.
I had taken a train from Normandy to Paris to Limoges, then a week later a train from Limoges to Paris. It was a lot of time spent moving in a short week. Back in Paris, we met up with Gabe, who had been by a week delayed in getting to France because of flight scheduling troubles. More flight scheduling troubles were to come. When we got to the airport to fly to Israel, we were told by the airline that we needed a round trip ticket to Israel (not the one-way we'd purchased), otherwise Israeli immigration would assume we were staying to work illegally and deport us. After some finagling (the details of which you'll have to ask me about in person) an agent at our airline found a friend who had seats on another airline where everything would be ok. The seats ended up being cheaper, with the catch that we had to spend the weekend in Paris (one can't really be too disappointed about that). I took the weekend to spend a little more time at some of Paris' cultural institutions. You can see below the Friday night crowds at the Louvre, the free night for students.

More Baby Goats

Well my last post was lacking some very important aspects of a baby goat's life, namely eating and sleeping. So I've got a picture and a video that hopefully will provide a clearer picture. Also there's a bonus photo of Emeric at the market selling his cheese...

It takes a little while to teach the goats how to drink out of the bucket, but once they learn, it works pretty well I think.


The baby goats have a boatload of hay under the metal awning. With a wonderful house and a big rock formation to play on, this has got to be one of the best places for a baby goat to grow up.

Emeric is in the green hat behind the counter. If you didn't guess, "Fromage Fermier" means "Cheese Farm".

Jersey

The last weekend I was at the Cheese Farm, I took a bus to a nearby town where I was able to catch a ferry to nearby Jersey. I'd never really thought that much about the fact that New Jersey was named after another place or that I would ever go there, but Emeric recommended the trip and I do like islands (for more information about Jersey, go here).

The ferry schedule was limited because it's not peak season right now, so I had essentially one full day to explore the island. Luckily, it's not that big, so I feel like I got a pretty good taste of what the island has to offer.


This is one of the castles on the island, probably the most well known. I spent my morning there, exploring every room and trying to imagine what life would have been in the middle ages, when the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh would have been hanging out there.

This is the view from the top of the castle, looking over the town of Gorey.

There is a bell for the castle, incidentally named Thomas. I figured I was obliged to take a picture.

Here you can see the bell close up. It says, "Je m'appelle Thomas," hinting at the influence it's nearby neighbor has had on the island.
In the afternoon I went to the north side of the island and walked a path along the cliffs. Jersians really like daffodils.

This is a sign I encountered after the cliff walk.

I saw the above sign while walking to the western shore to watch the sun set over the Atlantic. It was hazy, but still quite a beautiful finish to the day.