Holy Land Tour Day 7



Outside St George's Cathedral, Jerusalem

 Sunday morning and the Aussies turn up in force at for the 8am Eucharist in the Cathedral Chapel - they even had to bring in extra chairs to accommodate us!  What a great start to the day.

Well it wasn't really the start because we had all partaken of breakfast before church and we came back to the hotel and had a second helping (well some did!).

Speaking of food our next stop was the  Upper Room where Jesus

partook of the Passover - the Last Supper with his disciples. Almost certainly this is not the room but it is  probably very close to the actual place where the action happened. Close by these days is the tomb of King David which is in marked contrast to many of the religious sites we have seen around the city so far - very simple.

Our next stopover is anything but simple. The magnificent Church of the Dormition of Mary- the tomb of Mary. This Franciscan run romanesque church is literally dripping in mosaics. We enjoyed a good look at its many superb chapels and shrines.

Judy Read & Ken Lal - pensive moment

Winifred Sebire exits the Upper Room

The rest of the day was spent exploring Jewish history. Firstly a visit to the Israel Museum which houses a fantastic and massive  model of Jerusalem in Jesus time - which provides an excellent perspective on the city with its palace, temple, streets and the likely place of Calvary.

This museum also houses the Shrine of the Book - the Dead Sea Scrolls. We will see later in the week where the scrolls were found at Qumran. Our visit to the Museum was to help us view the parchments and the scale of this freak discovery of a Bedouin shepherd boy back in 1947.

Yad Vashem is the Hebrew name for Museum of the Holocaust where we spent a couple of hours. This is an overwhelming presentation depicting man's cruelest hour and the impact that has followed for the people of Israel.  Our guide was clearly quite emotional as he spoke to us about the holocaust.

Our guide, Gadi (centre right) and a more sombre moment at the end of the day.

The pilgrims are enjoying the comments of our followers to this site. We would be delighted if more readers both signed up and added their comments on our journeying.