We didn’t have anything planned for today. Apart from needing to be in Bethlehem in the late afternoon to meet up with the tour that we’re next booked on.

Philip wanted to again wander around the Old City in Jerusalem. But I wasn’t really enthused about that idea. I was all for doing something different. To look for or at something obscure. Within walking distance. And relatively cheap! So I bamboozled him with a dozen different ideas. I drive him crazy sometimes! And eventually we came up with a walk to the Monastery of the Cross.

About 40 minutes to walk there. In much the same direction when we went yesterday to the Israel Museum.

Israel is beautiful in the spring time. Wild cyclamen growing near rocks. Flowering trees and shrubs. Golden balls of wattle.

The Monastery of the Cross is in a little green valley and has a long complicated history. Like all of this land. Going back to the 400s, the church has been demolished and rebuilt and fortified down through the centuries. For many centuries the Georgians (the people of the land between Russia and Turkey) owned it, but then the Greeks bought it and have had it ever since.

It’s a huge building. But I don’t even know if it’s used as a monastery any more. There was one nun who was dusting the huge vaulted domed church room.

Beautiful old Byzantine mosaic floor. Wonderful painted frescoes on the ceilings, domes and walls, depicting Biblical scenes. I found it fascinating trying to work out which Biblical story the pictures were portraying.

You can just wander about lots of the big old empty rooms. Some with artefacts from the past. Working objects like the kitchen and dining room with marble table tops.

Beautifully wrought, carved and painted statues and icons just left propped up in empty rooms. It seems to be gradually crumbling away.

The legend behind the Monastery is fascinating or interesting.  I’m not sure what other adjectives to use here. The shortened version says Abraham was given the staff from the Trinity when they visited him in his tent to tell him he would have a son. He planted the staff and watered it from the River Jordan where it grew into a three-pronged tree of pine, cedar and cypress. He gave a sprig of it to Lot who grew a tree. And from this tree the cross of Jesus was later made.

One of the oddities in one of the side rooms was a framed picture of Sydney Harbour. Taken long before there was a big settlement there. Where did that come from and why was that there?

We had our picnic lunch sitting on a rock outside the monastery. And guess who joined us? A cat of course!

Then it was time to go go Bethlehem. Which is really now just a suburb of sprawling Jerusalem. Or rather, they’re both sprawling towards each other. But Bethlehem is in the Palestine section so you can’t use Israeli taxi drivers. They’re not allowed by law to go there. So we rang the taxi driver we’ve used before. His mother was Israeli and his father was Palestinian. So he’s allowed to go there. But he can’t stay there, even though he was born in Bethlehem. He isn’t even allowed to pick up a paying customer from Bethlehem to take back to Jerusalem. He is such an interesting man to talk to. To hear different perspectives on life in Israel these days.

But it ended up taking us one and half hours to drive to Bethlehem. And it’s only a few miles away. I have never been in such traffic jams. Not even in Beirut or Los Angeles. It’s because of Pescha (Passover), the taxi driver said. Just standing still in traffic for long periods of time. Horns tooting. Cars trying to push in and past you. He tried three different ways to get to Bethlehem and eventually we came in round the back way. It took us nearly twice as long as getting to Tel Aviv which is the other end of the country. And costing us more than a trip to Tel Aviv.

We were glad to get finally get there. Bethlehem looks nothing like what you’d imagine. Even when you’ve made mental allowances. It’s a very big town. And very bedraggled and tired. Our hotel is called Paradise Hotel and is very nice! Much higher standard than what Philip and I usually book!

We were meeting our tour at dinner time. So in the meantime we went for a short walk. Bought some bananas as we were hungry. And some souvenirs for grandchildren. We got talking to the Arab shopkeeper. He finds it very hard that he is never allowed to ever go to Jerusalem. Most of the Arabs in Bethlehem are Christians but none of them can go.

And now we’ve joined up with our tour group and had dinner together with them. A wonderful Arab buffet dinner at the hotel. There’s nearly fifty of us in the group, so it’s bigger than I expected. And they’re a bit older than I expected. A lot of them are our age!

I thought I’d finish this blog with a photo from the kitchen of the Monastery. It was such a fascinating place. I’m still mulling over the thoughts such a place engendered in me today.