Our World Travels...

Laura, at the airport, just after arriving in Israel! Jerusalem, known as either the “Holy city,” or the “Eternal city,” is filled with sacred locations and many religious people of all walks of life. Since we had only a few days in Jerusalem, and nothing additional planned for Israel, we spent most of our time in the old city, which is surrounded by a city wall, built by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 1500’s. The entire city is filled with shops, selling everything from t-shirts to supposed ancient remnants to spices to religious icons. It is an interesting place, to say the least…with a plethora of religious pilgrims armed with holy books and soldiers armed with semi-automatics on every street corner. Many of the shops selling everything you could imagine were housed within centuries old buildings, sharing space with the many holy sites. The city of Jerusalem has a certain “feel” to it and we definitely will never forget our time there. As many of you may know, the cheapest flights ...

Although we have visited many “medieval” towns throughout western Europe, none so far have compared to old town Rhodes. It is simply amazing. We felt like we were in the center of a castle, which in fact, we were. Rhodes Town was the headquarters and fortress of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the last crusader knights. Many bloody battles and sieges were fought here against the Ottoman Turks. The castle finally fell in the 1500’s, but has been remarkably preserved. There are battlements everywhere, and the streets are made of the most elaboratly designed pebble-stone , not cobblestone, which is very interesting, but can hard on flip-flop clad feet. The knight's castle, city walls, and hospital are all still around and in good condition, making it a fabulous city to visit, deffinitly one of our favorites thus far. Because there are no direct ferries, and the roundabout way via boat takes almost 2 days, we flew from Crete to Rhodes, which was a bit of an adventure in itself, b...