It’s impossible to fully convey the experience of Jerusalem in a few blog posts. So all I can do is show a few highlights. On one of my first days in the Old City, I walked the Via Dolorosa (the traditional path of Jesus on his way to the crucifixion), consisting of fourteen “stations,” the read more
As part of my trip, I joined a multi-day tour of the Galilee region. The focus of the tour was on sites from the New Testament, since the Galilee was where much of Jesus’ ministry took place. The following few photos don’t really do it justice, but hopefully they give you a flavor of things. read more
(Scene: early one morning in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. I walk past a shopkeeper ["SK"] selling metal trinkets. *Note: 1 U.S. dollar = 3.5 Israeli shekels) SK: Hey… hey! Come in here (motioning inside the shop), let me show you something. Me: (With slight hesitation) okay. SK: Everything in the read more
Tel Aviv was originally built as an extension of the ancient city of Jaffa (Yafo). To this day Jaffa retains its Arab character: The clock tower: The Mahmudiya mosque: The Church of St. Peter: View of Tel Aviv from the south: The flea market! Anyone interested in some junk?
This summer I have the privilege of spending some time in Israel. Having been here less than a week, I get the sense that my visit will be too short to really see everything–but my goal is to make the best of what time I do have! My trip begins in Tel Aviv: Welcome to read more
we drove up to whistler for a couple of days and had a mini-vacation. dinner at an irish pub. i had a “steak and guinness pie”, which was as big as my head. an easy hike to lost lake. and a visit to the olympic rings.
I was very glad to have my friend Kim help me drive from Chicago to Vancouver last week. Though we were on a rather tight schedule (we covered the entire trip in 3.5 days), we still managed to see quite a bit on the road. I had to pack the car to the max: One read more
Near the end of my trip, I made two other sojourns to places outside of central/western Syria where I had spent all of my time. The first was to Palmyra (or Tadmor in Arabic), an ancient oasis city in the desert that once was an important caravan stop. The Roman ruins here give a glimpse read more
In the course of traveling through all of the sites mentioned in the previous post, I spent a few nights in the coastal cities of Latakia (Arabic “al-Ladqiyye”) and Tartous. Latakia is on the northern coast of Syria, and is an important and bustling port city: I naively thought that I’d be able to catch read more
After several days in the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo, I had the chance to visit a number of sites near Aleppo and the Mediterranean coast with the help of a driver–doing this helped me to cover quite a bit of ground over the course of two days. It’s hard to do justice to read more