Israel Reflections 2015: Masada & the Dead Sea
For a little different start to our trip, I decided this year to fit in a visit to Masada and the Dead Sea. This was both for getting over jet lag purposes and because the history and geology of both places are a great frame for the rest of the week. From student Jillian Igl-Dickson, here is a description:
“Upon arriving in Israel and getting a few hours of sleep we were off on our first adventure to go see and explore the Dead Sea and Masada. We left our hotel in Jerusalem late in the morning to head toward Masada where we spent the first half of our day. Thankfully, Professor Schneider took pity on our exhausted group and refrained from making us hike to the top of Masada via the Snake Trail (45 min-1 hour hike), but instead let us take the cable car to the top. Given that this was our first real experience in Israel, it was an amazing way to start off our trip. The views from the cable car of Masada and the surrounding landscape were absolutely breathtaking. We were fortunate enough to have lots of time to explore Masada and learn more about the history of the site [and the story of the Roman siege.]
Well, I had very high hopes for being able to blog while in Israel and those were quickly dashed between the total lack of sleep and need to reflect on what we were seeing! So finally, now that we have been back for a week, I will start posting about the sights and visits that we had. We stopped over on the way and spent about 8 hours running around Vienna. This proved to be a terrific stop because we were able to link two different visits in Israel to what we saw in Vienna. We started at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna where the famous Klimt painting, The Kiss, is shown. Up until very recently, the Belvedere also housed a painting known as the Lady in Gold (seen above). And you can still see t-shirts and mugs bearing the likeness of this painting through downtown Vienna. But this painting is now longer there.