...And Then There was the Bomb Scare

Today started slow. I didn't even set my alarm. Zandra and I went down to the lobby a half hour early because we didn't see a text saying Bob was delayed. But that time was well spent watching an extended family gather for a Bar Mitzvah. I have never seen a louder family in my life. I couldn't stop laughing about how loud and chaotic it was. I even filmed it in case I question myself later about the decibel level.

When we connected with Bob we headed for Elah Valley, the place where David slew Goliath. There was no place to pull off the road so Bob waited on the shoulder while we hopped the guard rail and went down to the dry riverbed. We each choose five smooth stones like David did. He used his in his sling shot. We plan on taking ours home to slay our own giants.

A ways further we came to Bet Guvrin-Maresha National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is an archeological site with over 475 caves in 750 acres. These caves saw a variety of uses for a period of over 2,000 years. The caves are located under the ancient cities of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin. They have been used for many purposes: oil pressing, columbarium, tomb, necropolis, hiding, worshipping, etc.  The first series of caves we visited were the bell caves. 

These caves were formed through the quarrying process, which left behind these bell-shaped caves.

This cave was used in the movie, "Jesus Christ Superstar."

We came upon a huge colony of bats.

Our next stop was to visit the Columbariums or dovecotes. The stairs down into these columbariums are steep and I chose only to do the most impressive one. It was hewn in the third century BC.

It has little niches all over the walls for the doves. The only thing living down there now are pigeons.

We ended our cave exploring with the Sidonian burial caves. This cave was the family tomb of Apollophanes, the head of the Sidonians in Bet-Guvrin.

The Sidonian caves are the only ones with paintings inside. This one had creatures (real and mythical) painted above the niches where the bodies were laid.

A three headed dog, near the entrance, guards the entrance to the underworld.

There is so much more we could have seen at this national park but by now we were hot and tired. We headed for the Ashkelon National Park on the Mediterranean. It is an archeological site with remains back to 1850 BC but we came for the beach. 

The water was warm and delightful.  I would say we searched for shells but they weren't hard to find.

We headed back to Jerusalem during rush hour. Since we have a car and parking is limited in Jerusalem we decided to eat at the Mamilla Mall where parking should be easy. We were on the street to turn into the parking garage when a police van pulled in front of us and blocked the street. He put up police tape from his van to both sides of the street. 

Then a Sapper got out of the van. His job was to deal with an unattended, unidentified object found on the sidewalk. We wanted to go to dinner but we were trapped and this was so interesting. Everyone else, cars and pedestrians waited as if they had seen this several times before.

It wasn't long, maybe a half hour or less, before the police tape came down and we were on our way. It wasn't until we pulled into the parking garage that we realized what a mess we were in. Tons of cars had been trapped inside the parking garage trying to get out. They had no visual to see what the problem was. Now they were trying to get out as we were trying to get in. It was a nightmare.  We finally got a spot and headed up to eat in an outdoor cafe. The food and company were good and it revived our spirits. Bob took the car back to the Old City and we walked back to our hotel. It was late and we were tired...a good tired. We had sucked the marrow out of this day.