I’m not a world traveler, but I’ve had the opportunity to visit Israel and the north of England, along with various spots in the U.S and Canada.
I’d have to say that the Israel trip stands out, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which unfolded in the Spring of 2013. It wasn’t a commercial tour, but more of a private one with a Roman Catholic priest, the brother of a brother-in-law, who knew the country well and was able to take me and seven other… pilgrims, I guess, to places that weren’t on any other itinerary. We visited most of the usual spots, except for Bethlehem (too unstable at the time), and a few out-of-the-way and obscure places. We stayed in hostels all over the country, from Mitzpe Ramon to Acco to Tel Hai, and several others along the way.
There were reminders of the tension and fragile peace at every turn, beginning with harrowing stories from our shuttle driver as we traveled from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The current hostilities in the north have affected places we visited, like Kiryat Shmona. We strayed quite close to the Lebanese and Syrian borders when we got lost one day. We followed behind a UN jeep as we headed to the remnants of an Israeli underground bunker and abandoned tank and still dangerous minefields from a 1973 skirmish near the Syrian border. We ate lunch in a Druze village in the Golan Heights.
We lingered at the beginnings of the Jordan River in Caesarea Philippi, caught glimpses of Mt. Hermon, floated in the Dead Sea, saw the famous cave where some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, visited En Gedi, walked the Via Dolorosa and the ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem, and prayed at the Wailing Wall. We were part of the crowd at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We became familiar with most of the gates into and out of the Old City.
One of our favorite places to eat was a restaurant in the Muslim Quarter, and we often gathered in a coffee shop in the Christian Quarter. I bought several small paintings and prints from an artist with a shop on Cardo Street, and a piece of pottery in the Armenian Quarter.
We walked through an outside market in Jerusalem, outside the walls, and visited Yad Vashem. We saw David Ben Gurion’s modest retirement villa in Sde Boker, in the Negev Desert, walked the ruins of Beersheba, sat at the edge of Maktesh Ramon and drank in that fantastical view. We walked the Snake Path to the top of Masada, swam in the Sea of Galilee and worshiped on its northwestern shore at Tabgha, walked the summits of Mounts Arbel and Tabor, visited Cana and Nazareth and Tiberias and the Temple Mount. We walked through the Garden of Gethsemane and stood on the Mount of Olives looking back over the Kidron Valley toward the Temple Mount and Mt. Zion and the modern city rising beyond.
There are many more details. It was my trip of a lifetime, most likely.
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