Dead Sea, En Gedi & Masada

Well Sebastian took some time off this Thanksgiving week and we really packed it in!!! First we hit the Dead Sea where you will also find En Gedi - a desert oasis. We also went to the fortress Masada, high up on the cliffs facing the Sea and Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found...

The kids were troopers - especially Ty. She really enjoyed En Gedi (as did we all) and the animals. But the next day at Masada I think she'd hit her limit for walking and site-seeing :-) Wednesday we went back to the house to take a quick break and re-pack for the Galilee trip.

Masada was impressive. I ended up carrying Tyler quite a bit (she had exhaustion and mama-citis at the same time) so missed a chunk so I am looking forward to our next outing there where I may have another opportunity to see it. (We live close enough that we can, and have, done it as a day trip) Qumran was not quite what I was expecting. Seeing the cave from a distance was sort of anti-climatic...other sites on the trip more than make up for it though!!

Alex is doing the inchworm crawl and wanting big Sisters stuff which is making things interesting LOL We ended up staying at the Youth Hostel of all places. It was fantastic. If any of you make it here (or are here) and need hotels DO check these places out. They are not the small dorm-room crappy types of things. The ones we have seen and stayed at are newer and with kids it works out great!! A lot less expensive too!! Which is saying alot give what they charge in Israel for hotel rooms (bloody ridiculous and for not much). The only bad thing if you can call it that is I usually push the beds together & against a wall so me and the kids sleep in one bed and Daddy lucks out with a bed of his own! (Sigh) Not fair, but with Alex still wanting to eat at night its the easiest way!

Next blog is Galilee...