Bethlehem

One of the highlights of Israel was visiting Bethlehem. It wasn't quite the peaceful village I have always imagined when reading the stories of Jesus birth in the Bible. As a matter of fact it was quite the tourist trap. From the moment we stepped off the bus we were assaulted by roaming street vendors. We managed to fight our way through them to finally reach the Church of the Nativity.

On a random side note I must mention that we did a lot of walking on this trip. Some of our group wore pedometers and there were days where we averaged 5 miles or more. The streets in most of the cities we visited were too narrow for a tour bus to navigate. So we did a lot of walking to the sites of interest. We also walked up a LOT of mountains. You see, this was an Historical Geography tour. The best way to see the geography of any land is to view it from the top of a mountain. I had no idea Israel was so mountainous.

Back to the Church of the Nativity. This church struck me as very odd. There were no seats in the main sanctuary. It was just a large open room.

We waded through the masses to get to a stairwell that would take us down to the grotto where Jesus is traditionally thought to have been born. The picture below shows as the priest said, "The exact spot where little baby Jesus came out of Mary". Not quite as I imagined it, but no trip to Israel would be complete for me without a visit to the birthplace of my Savior.