I enjoyed the lowest place on earth

I went to the Dead Sea a week or so ago, I've just been a bit slow getting this up online. Amman is about an hour's drive away from the Dead Sea. Which is 423 metres below sea level, and the lowest place on earth. Here's a map, look how close I am to Jerusalem, it's only about 2 hours as the crow flys. It feels wrong to call it a sea it's only 18km at it's widest point (Lake Taupo is 33km wide and 46km long) I could totally see the other side.

I went with a group from my hotel, we stopped off at a church, apparently famous for mosaics and pilgrimage, but as they were in the middle of service and it's an orthodox church, their services go on for hours, literally hours, we didn't get to see the original mosaics, only reproductions in the nearby museum which were pretty cool. 

The town was celebrating something, I don't know what, but they had a lot of signs up... perhaps Easter? 

Then we stopped into a shop that showed us how they make their mosaics, again, pretty darn cool. 

A hill where Moses hung out? Yeah, I know I should remember more of this, or I could look it up, but this blog will never get posted if I have to start researching where I have been. This is a view of the West Bank from Jordan. 

And finally we get to the Dead Sea. Yay! 

It really is as floaty as they say.

We came in through a hotel complex, and onto a private beach, you can see the fence on the left that stops the plebs from getting in. On the private beach we can wear immodest clothes. I thought I had grabbed the ziplock bag containing my black bikini only to discover when I got there it was the ziplock bag containing my black long-john top. Thankfully lovely Australian Catherine let me borrow her shorts and my bra could pass as a bikini top. 

I covered myself in dead sea mud, really it was the only an excuse to legitimately black up I think I'll ever have. It didn't make my skin soft nor smooth, in fact I had to buy moisturiser the next day. 

When I got back to the hotel my hair was crunchy with salt. Yummo. The Dead Sea is awesome sauce.