Israel!! Joffa & the Valley of Elah

Monday, March 3, 2014 - Tel Aviv to Galilee
Joffa, David Ben Gurion's House,  & Valley of Elah

Hello! And welcome back to my Journey!! It's been a couple of years, hasn't it?
Today is actually Tuesday, March 4, and it's been fun facebooking some friends while it is still last night, this morning. I always knew they were a little "behind the times" Hahah :-P  Our Israel tour starts in earnest today. Our last couple of days in Tel Aviv were acclimation days to get used to the time and culture (altho I still can't read Hebrew!).

Yesterday we had pretty much half a day before we picked up the rest of the group at the airport & headed north to the Galilee, so we went to Joffa in the morning. Joffa is about a km from our hotel, & a group walked there on our first day. It's the town from where Jonah departed on his ill-fated ocean voyage, trying to run from God's plan for him. Jonah's Joffa is about 15 layers underground, and there is a historic town there, but not quite Jonah's Joffa. This guy reminded us of Joffa's claim to fame...

Old Joffa is a walled city with a maze of foot alleys that run between the buildings.

This is our group entering the city

 Between some buildings

Down one of the alleys was an inocuuous looking door which looked like all the other doors in the village (only many of the doors had modern shops behind them!).  This may (or may not) have been the house of Simon the Tanner, on whose roof Peter had the vision of the unclean meat descending on a sheet (in Acts). There are several indications that this could possibly, maybe, kinda be his house, but there's no way to know for sure. At the very least, it's what his house could have looked like...

But oh wait. It says it is, so it must be! (please note my sarcasm):

Joffa is a walled city, and gave me a better understanding of what Jericho might have looked like.

After we explored the more contemporary Joffa, we toured the home of David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel & who declared its independence on May 14, 1948. A very modest 1950s house that wasn't very spectacular.

We still had some time to kill so we went to the Valley of Elah, where there is certainty that this is where the battle of David & Goliath took place. A very non-descipt, normal looking valley between two rises (they call them mountains in Israel). No signage (that I could tell), no gift shop. It was just some random looking valley in the middle of nowhere, only "they" are pretty sure that something really significant happened here.

As we were walking to the brook from where David found his five smooth stones, we ran into a bit of a road block. Since David was a shepherd, this just added a bit of authenticity to the place (and sheep poo to the bottom of everyone's shoes!). The rise behind the sheep on the right is where the good guys were.

Everyone was looking for their own five smooth stones in this dry creek bed.

Our guide is demonstrating how the sling worked.

Bonus!! This little guy was born just minutes before we got there. The presence of 24 people arriving on the scene was (understandably) upsetting for Mama Sheep, but she calmed down after we went down to the creek.

We are now in the Galilee, about 1/2 hour north of the lake. We'll be here for three more nights.  Today we will go to Capernaum, see where the Sermon on the Mount could have been preached, and cruise out into the Sea of Galilee. It's gonna be a full day!