My trip to Jerusalem Part 1

Disclaimer: before you begin to look at my pictures and see some really cool things I want you to realize that a lot of these sites and artifacts are argued over. What I mean is that some Bible scholars believe that Jesus was crucified in one location and others think it was some where else. So when you look at these pictures take them with a grain of salt. Because the most important thing is not seeing the exact spot where Jesus was buried it is that Jesus was buried and rose again to conquer sin. Keep perspective as you view the pictures.

Jerusalem is about 1 hour from the host family I am staying with.
I get one day off a week so they drove me up to the city for my day off.
I saw this sign and started to get really excited.

Before we arrived in the city we stopped at Ain Karem right outside of Jerusalem.
Maggie, the mother of the host family, lived here for awhile, and it has some great history.
Unfortunately she said that it has become too commercialized and houses have been built everywhere.
She said it used to be so nice with trees and plants but now a lot of it has been tore down to build.

This is thought to be the spring that Mary visited to get her  water everyday.
The outside stone is new,  but the original well is behind it.

We stopped at this ice cream place to get a cone to walk around with.
I picked cookie monster. yummmyy!!!

According to tradition, this is where Mary met her cousin Elizabeth and sang a hymn of praise.
Found in Luke 1:39-56

I was not able to visit all of these places because of time, but
I hope to later on. I just thought you should see them. 

Statue of the meeting.

I 

A well inside the visitation. Nothing explained
it's significance.

This is a sunset from the city of Ain Karem. These are the Jericho
mountains. How cool?!?

This is the church on the location where John the Baptist was Baptized.
It was closed when I showed up but I took some pictures from the outside.

This is the church from the outside.

This was my room at the hostel called Abraham Hostel. I
stayed with a two guys. One from Ireland and the other from
Canada. They were great guys.
http://www.abraham-hostel-jerusalem.com/

Some of the signs in the hostel. I thought they were pretty
cool.

The tour begins and the best thing is it was free!!

The outer wall of the old city. There are bullet holes in the
top of the stone from the 1948 war.

This is the Tower of David. But it was actually built by King Herod.
But during the Crusades the soldiers saw the magnificence of the
tower and instead of asking a local who built the tower
 they assumed it was built by King David.

This is Mount Alirot St. the name comes from the mountain
that many believe Noah's ark stopped on. It is in present day Turkey.
But was at one time in Armenia.

The street sign.

The Syrian Orthodox Church. This church advertises that it has
the upper room where the last supper took place, but only
the Syrians believe this.

Amazing view from  the rooftops of Jerusalem. It is almost the
exact same picture on the back of the 50 shekel bill. The picture
on the 50 shekel bill is of an author named Oren neu dag.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:50_NIS_Bill_Obverse_%26_Reverse.jpg
He wrote a book in 1954 about his beloved city that won
him the Nobel Peace Prize.He begins the book, "Jerusalem, a
city connected by its rooftops but seperated by its inhabitants."
This is still true today.

These are the pillars from the Roman era of Jerusalem. The Romans
rebuilt this road after destroying it. This was part of the main road
and referred to as Cardo which means center in Latin. This might
have been the very road Jesus walked down when he came to the city.

A picture of what it might have looked like.

This is a replica of a map found in Jordan where the original still is.
It is part of the map of the world they found. Jerusalem was in the
center of the map. And as you can see the Cardo runs right down
the center of the street. There is also no temple because it was
destroyed during this time. Something also different was that the
maps back then were oriented to the east not the north because
you could tell where the sun rose from, but no one knew how to
find north. This can be seen by what we say when we get lost.
We say disoriented not disnorthatized. For some reason that is not
a word.

This synagogue was originally going to be built by a 99 year old rabbi.
He came with 400 students to Jerusalem. The day after he arrived he died.
The students decided to build it any way so they all took out really big
loans they could not pay back from the Turks. They had the synagogue
built, but after 40 years when they could not pay the money back, the Turkish
Salton stepped in. To teach the students a lesson he destroyed the synagogue.
It was built again by another group and then destroyed by an earthquake.
Then rebuilt again by the Israelis and destroyed in the 1948 war. It was just rebuilt
and was just finished a few months ago. The name of this synagogue is the
"Destroyed Synagogue." Talk about a name that you might want to change.