Israel, Day 7, 28 December

Before leaving town to head north we stopped, along with many other groups, by the Knesset's Menorah, the official symbol of Israel, sculpted in bronze by Benno Elkan and given as a gift from Britain.  Each of the almost thirty images tells a little bit of Jewish history.

Over the next few days with the warm weather, sunshine, and desert-like vegetation (and often a lack of vegetation) I felt like I was riding through California.  We saw citrus orchards, pomegranate trees, olive trees, and, later on, eucalyptus trees.

Bet She'an National Park  is an enormous site with ruins dating back well over 2000 years, but it wasn't too hard to imagine some parts of life there.  It made us grateful for the advances in plumbing.

on the cardo, the main shopping drag

Bet Alpha Synagogue was unusual in many ways, but especially for the zodiac mosaic floor, found in 1928 during the building of a kibbutz.  A movie re-enacting how the floor may have come to be made the visit more entertaining (along with counting almost ten more wild cats).  It wasn't that the places we visited were dull, but I think the accumulation of stories and facts was wearing people down.

Just in time was a visit to Gan Sahne, which has a spring-fed natural pool like Barton Springs, only warmer (28C, 82F).  The kids loved feeling the fish nibble on their toes and I think I could have swum forever.  Ahh.

The last drive of the day took us to a hotel run by Kfar Giladi Kibbutz.  We had been imagining something like a youth hostel or a farm with chores, but we were at the wrong end of the spectrum.  There were two enormous rooms for our family, free wifi, a 25m pool, table-tennis, and excellent dinner and breakfast buffets.  We had our second swim of the day and settled in for a good night's sleep.