Sandal Prints through the Text: Caesarea

Saturday was our big excursion day! We first attended our worship service in the morning. Our congregation gathers on Saturday mornings (Shabbat) for worship. We've found that the weekly schedule is quite different here compared to the States. Jewish and some Christian congregations meet on Saturday mornings, and then the work week/school week begins on Sunday. Jewish schools are generally in session Sunday through Thursday (Shabbat begins on Friday night). Arab schools are generally in session Monday through Thursday plus Saturday (having Friday and Sunday off). Our home-school co-op week also begins on Sundays. This is very hard for us to get used to! Below are a couple of pictures of our church. We are enjoying it and feel very welcome there. We're hoping to plug in

somewhere through participation or service.

After worship on Saturday morning, we hopped into our rental car and headed to Caesarea. (Josiah nearly cried when we had to give up the car. The boys loved it!)

We went to see Herod's palace and port city which is in ruins but has had some parts of it rebuilt

(particularly the theater).

The boys are standing on some original stones in the theater.

We walked along the water (Mediterranean Sea) and picked up some marble pieces from the palace. When the Romans came and wiped it out, it was swept into the sea. So there are still pieces of the palace getting washed up today. There are also a zillion sea shells. You'll see that in one of the pictures. There's hardly any sand - just shells in some areas. When we got home, I threw our sandy clothes into the washing machine, checking pockets first, and Caleb had filled both pockets with shells and rocks. I took a picture so you can see how much he had in his pockets. The rock toward the bottom of the picture (black and white) is a chunk of marble.

The shells, stones, and marble in Caleb's pockets

The shore along the Mediterranean at Caesarea

Tim and the kids walking along the shore. (Here, Tim wanted to take these large chunks of marble home but thought that might not work out so well for us.)

Herod built a fresh-water swimming pool IN the sea. The boys wanted to play in it and got their clothes pretty wet. It's also in ruins, so it's saltwater now. But you can see roughly where it used to be.

We also saw the hippodrome where Herod would've hosted chariot races. The boys found that fascinating.

After seeing the palace, we went to see the aqueduct. Herod built a 7-mile-long aqueduct from the spring near Mt. Carmel down to Caesarea so that he could have fresh water. Part of the aqueduct is still there, so we went to see it and stayed for the afternoon at the public beach next to it. We then hiked to a point where we could get up on top of the aqueduct and walk along it for a little ways.