Mary and I joined a group from the US Embassy this morning, on a bus trip to Umm Qais. The ancient city is perched on a hilltop overlooking the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights, and the Sea of Galilee, and is the site of Jesus miracle of casting the bad spirits of a man into a herd of pigs, which then ran down the hill into the water of the Sea of Galilee. Umm Qais sites include a black basalt theater, a colonnaded street, an underground mausoleum, and fields strewn with large pieces of stone. We ate lunch on the patio of a restaurant with amazing views.
