Exodus Tour

For three weeks in October, I joined a Pilgrim group tour called Exodus. After visiting key tourist sites in Egypt, including a cruise up the Nile, we traveled to Biblical Goshen. We proceeded to follow the route of the Exodus to Mount Sinai. The climb to the top of the mountain is quite demanding, and I would not recommend it to people who are not in good shape.

From Sinai, our bus took us to the Red Sea crossing to Acqaba, Jordan. After boarding another bus with a different gun-toting security guard, we crossed the Arabian desert to Amman. A short ride from there is Petra, which is hard to describe. After going to the top of Mount Nebo, where Moses died, we crossed into the promised land on the Allenby bridge. From there our Exodus tour became a more conventional tour of Israel. I was happy to get to some of the places I was unable to see when I was there in 2003, including Bethlehem, Nazareth and the top of the Temple Mount.

I really enjoyed Egypt, and we had no trouble anywhere we went. I found middle-easterners to be generally friendly, though a little too eager to try to sell us something.

Look for my pictures posted on Picassa Albums at: http://picasaweb.google.com/TravelMercy

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