toda

“Toda” was the first word of Hebrew I learned back in November when I was lucky enough to travel to Israel and then to Jordan for my job.  The word means “thank you” and it’s the perfect way to summarize how I feel about the trip – which is thankful. It was a fantastic, exhausting, and eye-opening experience that I feel so fortunate to have seen firsthand. I used the opportunity to take tons of photos and I felt like a kid in a candy store because everywhere I turned there was something magnificent to look at – the sea, the old walls around Jerusalem, Petra in Jordan, or even just the beautiful food.  I finally had a bit of time this week to edit some of the images I brought back. Here are some of my favorites:

Starting in Israel, this is Old Jaffa by the water. It was beautiful!:

Here are some more sights around Old Jaffa in Tel Aviv:

I was surprised how much the streets of Jerusalem reminded me of the cobblestone streets in Europe.:

More Jerusalem streets:

Here are some views from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum. I went twice while I was there and on the first day, the skies were dark and moody which seemed appropriate.:

This is inside of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. Above you are all of these photos, below you is a deep reflecting pool in which the photos are reflected, and around you on all sides are binders full of names and biographies of each victim.:

Because our schedule was so packed, a lot of our sightseeing was done at night. These are a few from our fist night of sightseeing in Old Jerusalem.:

That night, we also visited the Western Wall. There were tons of notes to God stashed in each crevice of the wall. An amazing sight for sure!:

Back at Old Jaffa:

Just in front of our hotel, there was a path that led along the water. We took a walk on one of the gorgeous sunny days and found lots of activity.:

Back in Old Jerusalem:

On one of our days in Tel Aviv, a guide led us around the neighborhood of Neve Tzedek. It was a place with tons of character, including this fabulous honor-system library. This melted my heart!:

And then we headed to Jordan for about 36 hours. We packed in the sightseeing though! Here is Amman as seen out of our car window.:

We stopped at some ancient ruins before we headed to lunch (because that’s what you do on your way to lunch, of course!).:

Later that evening after we were all settled in, we took a drive to the Dead Sea. It was very cool to be at the lowest point on Earth and to feel the salts that are talked about all around the world! This is a view of the desert as seen from our car (notice the trend) on the way there:

And here is the Dead Sea and the sandbags that serve as steps to get there…

I saw something that night that I never even could have dreamed existed, Jordanian bagpipers!:

The next day, after some rest, we made the three hour drive from Amman to Petra to see the ancient town carved into the mountains. It was well worth the drive! Here, we are approaching Petra.:

And here are the sights from Petra itself:

Can you believe that our guide was wearing a Pistons hat!? We loved it!

We were down in The Siq, or the gorge, at this point and it was lovely.

The lovely animals of Petra. And, yep, I may have been riding on one of their backs!: