Trip to Egypt, Jordan and Israel

Yes, we are back from an exotic vacation. We went to Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Pictures will come later. We will describe some of things we saw. Cairo is the capital of Egypt with about 17 million people and no traffic lights, then you can imagine cars and people and handcarts, in other words, everything moving in the same place and at sometimes in opposite directions. It is quite dry and dusty. We went to Cairo, Memphis and Giza.
Egypt is an ancient country with lots of history. There we had a dinner and show(we did not care much for the show) on a cruise on the Nile River. This river was and is very important to the people. As there is no rain, Nile river is the only source of water. Also when Pharaoh(king of Egypt) ordered that 2 yr. old and younger to be killed, his mother put him in a kind of basket made of papyrus and put him in the water, so Pharaoh's daughter who was down the river picked him up and raised him as a prince(Moses prince of Egypt). Alligators do not get close to papyrus, they do not know if it is because there is some smell that the alligators do not like or not.
In Egypt there are more than 60 pyramids, we visited the most famous ones (Kefren, Queops and Mikerinos). We went inside of some of them. The colors of the paintings and hieroglyphs on the walls are incredible. The rest of artifacts were taken and put in the Cairo Museum. We also visited the Valley of Kings, another burial site. They mummified the person and buried the person with a bunch of their belongings, including grains. The reason for mummification was that they believed that the spirit would come back again and take the body(kind of resurrection, but not exactly). Then we visited some archaeological sites such as Luxor and Karnack. Karnack is amazing. You cannot believe that they would get one block of rock and make big obelisks, gigantic columns and statues. When we post some pics. you will see.
In Jordan we visited Gerash and Petra. Gerash was a huge archaeological site, the kind I always wanted to see my whole life. Then we went to Petra which is one of the 7 modern Wonders of the World. It is a gigantic site where buildings where sculpted in the rocks, but they were used as burial sites. It is kind of like taking Zions or Bryce Canyon National Park and engraved a building in it. Yes, it is man made. It is beautiful. In order to see the sites you can go on foot, by donkey and parts of it by camel. So you can imagine the smell of "fresh squeezed donkey and camel souvenirs." You need to look up to see the sites but look down to not bring souvenirs home on your shoes. Part of the way they have some employees picking them up, but you need to be careful. Some of the sites you can see with some walking but we hiked up to the "Monastery". We think we hiked about 6 miles that day, but it was worth it.
In Israel, we visited Bethlehem, Nazareth, Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, Jerusalem, Jericho etc. We sailed on the Sea of Galilee, this sea is fresh water, in other words it is a lake and guess what, it looks like Bear Lake. The geography of the Holy Land is so similar to Utah, some times you think that you have been spun around and when you opened your eyes you are in Utah or the Holy Land. Ed floated on the Dead Sea. I did not, because I hurt my leg snorkeling in the Red Sea. We snorkeled on the Jordan side of the Red Sea, but we could see Israel from Jordan. The amount of fish close to shore was incredible. What I like about snorkeling is to see the fish swimming so peacefully, they are not afraid of you and you are not afraid of them. By the Dead Sea there was the black mud that is supposed to be good for your skin, we got in there. It was fun!
Biblical sites are said to be "the traditional site" because they are not totally sure they know exactly were it is. On most of the sites there are churches built and some trinket shops with a small part of the natural terrain where the site is supposed to be. So if you really want to walk where Jesus walked you should have gone there 2000 years ago, but passing this part, there some sites where you can feel that it is real, like the Garden Tomb(place where Jesus was buried) Pres. Harold B. Lee stated that it is the real site and when I got inside I had a feeling that the place was empty and as I was leaving there was a sign on the door "He is not here, he is risen".
Herod's Temple(which is the same site as the temple of Solomon) is the site that Palestinians and Israelis fight over, today this site belongs to the Palestinians. But I felt such a peaceful and good spirit there, similar to when I go to the temple. It is sad that they kill each other because of it.
Jericho is a beautiful city. It is an oasis in the middle of the desert. It is amazing seeing all the dry land around it and green, healthy vegetation because of the spring water.
We walked through the Hezekiah's tunnel (about half mile) with water up around our knees and other times higher, it is very dark, we had flashlights, it is very narrow and some areas you have to duck down to pass. It was a lot of fun. When we have more time we will upload some pictures.