The Pilgrimage: Israel Part Twenty

On the way up to Jerusalem, we passed through Jericho briefly, long enough to see a giant Sycamore tree (not old enough to be climbed by Zaccheus, but you get the mental image),

We then went up the old Roman road to Wadi Quelt, a wadi is a dry river bed, and in this case we are talking about a deep ravine into the wall of which was built St. George’s monastery…..It’s one of my favorite places to be at sunrise or sunset, just across the ravine from the monastery, on a hill overlooking it.

Here we see Christianity tenaciously clinging to life over the many centuries, and here is an excellent place to recite the 23rd Psalm about the valley of the shadow.

From there, we went straight up to the Mt. Zion Hotel, across the Hinnom valley from actual Mt. Zion. It is a beautiful old boutique hotel which once was St. John’s Hospital, across from the the Scottish Presbyterian Church.
Here is the inside of one of the nicer suites in the hotel, with an adjacent garden overlook.