Well, Bryan and I had a wonderful time this weekend. Everything went incredibly smoothly. Which is not always the case anytime you rent a car and travel and plan to be outdoors a lot, especially in a foreign country. But, God definitely took care of us this weekend. The weather was beautiful until today. The rain chased us home but that was fine, it didn’t ruin our plans.

We went up to the Galilee. We drove by the borders of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. We visited a few Crusader castles, a couple of Biblical sites, and a 2nd century AD city.

The first picture is of Gan Hashlosha. You swim in the streams. Two years ago my school took us here and we swam. The water filled up to the steps then. The fish liked to nibble at your ankles but it didn’t hurt. This time we didn’t swim, we just walked around.

The second picture is of Nimrod’s fortress. It is the most impressive fortress in Israel. Muslims built it in the 13 century. It guarded an important route. The drive to get there was gorgeous and the fortress was incredible. It even had a ‘secret tunnel.’

The third picture is of another fortress. This one was originally built by the Crusaders in the 10th or 11th century. When the Muslims took it over they destroyed most of it, but it was rebuilt 500 years later. It was actually used by the Israeli’s in one of the wars.

The last picture is of a tomb in the city of Beit She’arim. Yes, it is a HUGE tomb. It was built for an important Rabbi in the 2nd cent AD. He and his sons were buried in there. They’re not there anymore because grave robbers got there before anyone else. Anyways, you can go inside the tomb and walk around. There were about 4 good-size rooms. In the picture you can see 3 arches. The middle door was to carry in the deceased. The small door to its left was made later for ‘pilgrims’ to come and do homage inside the tomb. It was made smaller so they would have to bend down and show humility.

There was a tomb cave next to this one however that is 75 meters in length and width. 135 coffins were found inside. We walked around that cave as well. It was a little strange walking around a cave of coffins, I’ll be honest. Thankfully, there were other living people in there and no deceased.