Masada

My original plan was to get up at 4:30 a.m. and hike up to Masada to see the sun rise over the Dead Sea. But a big purpose of my trip was to show Lily the land of the Bible and Israel the nation, so she informed me pretty adamantly that I was welcome to hike up whenever I wanted but she was going to hang out at the pool. That night we drove to the Masada visitors center just to check it out, and signs were pretty clear that the park opened well affer sunrise and that the trail was closed until then. Israel is probably not a good place to go sneaking past closed signs at night, despite one's best intentions. So we decided to go early and ride the tram to the top and hike around on the top of the plateau.

Later, I discovered that you can in fact hike up to catch the sunrise. But you can't use the 'snake trail' which winds its way to the top from the visitors center and is closed at night. You can, however, hike up along the Roman rampart, which is in the western side of Masada and is reached by a separate road.


Masada was very impressive, both the scene itself and the small hike to Herod's palace, and the story of the Jewish last stand against the Romans. The visitor center has a good media presentation which explains some of the history.

After exploring for a few hours we took the tram back to the entrance area. We were greeted with this snack area (pictured here) just loaded with juicy Jaffa oranges. Fresh squeezed, cold orange juice was a memorable treat!