Hi Everyone, and a special Happy Birthday Head! Hope you're having a great day!
Today has been an interesting day. We got up early and caught the bus to go into Bethlehem. It was pretty easy getting there. Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank and we had to go through checkpoints to enter. We didn't have any problems!
We then caught a cab to Manger Square and the Church of Nativity. It was beautiful. There's the grotto where it's believed Baby Jesus was born. There was a service being held in the grotto, so we weren't able to go inside to see the star on the ground. But we did explore the rest of the church.
There is a beautiful newly updated church attached to the main church - which is the one they always show on TV on Christmas Day in Bethlehem.
When we tried to catch the bus back to Jerusalem, we were told at the checkpoint that all tourists had to get off because we couldn't go through that one. There were 5 of us so we just went back into the main part of Bethlehem and went to the other checkpoint. Apparently they said there wasn't a way to scan our passports at the original checkpoint, which is just weird since they didn't do anything with them when we entered the city.
The other checkpoint was CRAZY. We had to wait in this insane line for 2.5 hours where we were crammed together like cattle and everyone was pushing. It was awful. When we did finally make it through the security, we only had to walk through the scanner and hold up our passports to the guy in the window - who barely nodded at us. We were pretty frustrated, but it was nice to get back into Jerusalem.
We decided then to just check out of the hostel and caught another sherut to Tel Aviv!
We got a little lost, and walked quite a bit to find our hostel, but we made it!
We got checked in and grabbed something to eat. Probably will take it pretty easy the rest of the night.
Tomorrow we plan to spend the day at the beach - can't wait!
The picture for today is in front of the grotto where Baby Jesus was born inside the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.
Today has been an interesting day. We got up early and caught the bus to go into Bethlehem. It was pretty easy getting there. Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank and we had to go through checkpoints to enter. We didn't have any problems!
We then caught a cab to Manger Square and the Church of Nativity. It was beautiful. There's the grotto where it's believed Baby Jesus was born. There was a service being held in the grotto, so we weren't able to go inside to see the star on the ground. But we did explore the rest of the church.
There is a beautiful newly updated church attached to the main church - which is the one they always show on TV on Christmas Day in Bethlehem.
When we tried to catch the bus back to Jerusalem, we were told at the checkpoint that all tourists had to get off because we couldn't go through that one. There were 5 of us so we just went back into the main part of Bethlehem and went to the other checkpoint. Apparently they said there wasn't a way to scan our passports at the original checkpoint, which is just weird since they didn't do anything with them when we entered the city.
The other checkpoint was CRAZY. We had to wait in this insane line for 2.5 hours where we were crammed together like cattle and everyone was pushing. It was awful. When we did finally make it through the security, we only had to walk through the scanner and hold up our passports to the guy in the window - who barely nodded at us. We were pretty frustrated, but it was nice to get back into Jerusalem.
We decided then to just check out of the hostel and caught another sherut to Tel Aviv!
We got a little lost, and walked quite a bit to find our hostel, but we made it!
We got checked in and grabbed something to eat. Probably will take it pretty easy the rest of the night.
Tomorrow we plan to spend the day at the beach - can't wait!
The picture for today is in front of the grotto where Baby Jesus was born inside the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.
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