Water at the spring in Ein Karem, the town where Mary visited Elizabeth

Today was set aside for seeing many sites in Jerusalem:

* Mea She’arim – We drove through this uber-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.

* Mount of Olives – The view of the city doesn't get much better than the one from here.

* Hosanna Road – We descended the mountain by foot on the same road that Jesus used for His Triumphal Entry (think: Palm Sunday). We sang "Hosanna in the Highest" on the way down.

* Dominus Flevit – A church by this name commemorates where Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and likened Himself to a mother hen. This was very moving--thinking of His unreciprocated love for the city.

* Garden of Gethsemane – On this site is the Church of All Nations. We met in the Garden believed to be on the same site as the one where Jesus and the disciples would often come to pray and rest. The roots of olive trees here date back 2,000 years.

* Saint Peter in Gallicantu – Another church. This one commemorates Peter’s denial of Jesus. It had a painted rooster on the door. Nice view of the city from here.

* Mt Zion: Tomb of David and Upper Room – Not a lot to see, actually. But there's a stone room here that's probably the resting place of David's bones. There's also a "recreation" of the upper room, where the disciples are said to have gathered after Jesus' ascension (Mark 14:12-26; Acts 1:13).

For lunch we stopped at a Falafel joint next to McDonald's. Yum. Falafel is a pita bread with fried chickpeas in a ball, which looks like a round hush puppy and tastes much better than it sounds.

* Israel Museum – Loved this. Saw the Shrine of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept. Looking at the Isaiah scroll, I learned that it did indeed have paragraph divisions to show transitions in thought even "way back when." We also saw a huge outdoor model of the Second Temple period in Jerusalem.

* Yad Vashem – The National Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust included the Valley of the Communities, Hall of Names, Children’s Memorial, and the new Museum complex. We spent more than three hours here. There's a grove planted outside dedicated to the Righteous of the Nations, non-Jews who risked or gave their lives to save Jews during WWII. Lots of tear-jerking stories. I was moved by one of two sisters who found each other 50-60 years later when they entered each other's names in the archives here.

* Knesset (Israel's Parliament). We waved as we drove by.

* Ein Karem – Picturesque village which was probably home to Zacharias and Elizabeth, where Mary visited her pregnant cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-56), and where Elizabeth's son, John (the Baptizer) was born (Luke 1:57-66).

We finished out the day with dinner at the Shipudei Hagefen restaurant, which served kosher food. The best thing on the menu in my book: the way they cook sweet potatoes.

I opted out of the sound and light show at the David Citadel tonight. I had a full enough day, don't you think? Two of our team now feel sick, and I want to stay well.

Israel is the size of Maryland. Most of us are finding that things are both larger and smaller than expected. For me, the Jezreel Valley's larger; the distance from the Mount of Olives to the Dome of the Rock, shorter.