a full day in Jerusalem

 

Our first full day in Jerusalem (the 22nd), we slept in- after the red-eye the previous night- before hitting the walls about 11 AM.  Starting at the Jaffa Gate (the west end of the old city) we walked around to the south, past the citadel and the Mt Zion Franciscan monastery outside the walls.

When we got around to the South, we could see across the valley of Hebron to the Mount of Olives, of which the lower slopes, as you can see below, are completely covered in tombs.  Since the valley is the site of Armageddon, it is a good place to be buried.

You can’t walk all the way around the city, because in the southeast corner, the wall of the city is the platform of the Temple Mount.  Luckily, it happened to be open when we got there around 12:30, so Cari and I were able to take a close look at the Western Wall on the way up, and then get our picture taken at (almost!) the Navel of the World (non-Muslims are not allowed in the Dome of the Rock).

We were kicked off the Temple Mount at 2pm along with all of the other non-Muslims, so, after some wandering around lost, we went to the church of St Anne, which is very near the Lion’s Gate at the east end of the old city.  The basilica there is (I gather) the oldest church (without remodels) in Jerusalem, having been built in the crusaders in the 11th century.  There is also just behind it a huge excavation which were pools in Jesus’s time, which later were turned into baths, then cisterns, and were then buried and are now uncovered.

The plan was to get back on the wall at the Lion’s Gate and complete the circuit, but unfortunately, the wall-walk there was exit only.  Though there is a northern route and a southern, both start at the Jaffa gate, so we had to hustle back through the city to get back on the walls before the stated 4 PM closing time.  As it happened, we were passed on the walls by the worker in charge of “closing” the wall-walk, and he was happy with our assurance that we would leave the wall eventually.  By the time we walked around the city again to the north and back to the Lion’s Gate in the east, it was dark.

By then, the camera was in dire need of re-charging, so we walked back across the old city again (a 10 or 15 minute walk) and dropped it off at our hostel before heading out into West Jerusalem (the new city) to find dinner.  We ended up calling it “Christmas” and treating ourselves to burgers, and the first good beer we’d had since Vienna, in a nice, clean, western bar.  Everywhere in the world has fries, but not many places have real Heinz ketchup: we had to snap a picture with the iPhone.

After winding our way back to the hostel, we grabbed the camera and headed to the Western Wall plaza, where we had a 9:10 appointment to go on a tour of the underground tunnels of the wall.  We were there early, so each of us was able to cover their head and go up to the wall, in the separate pens for men and women, of course. 

Unfortunately, the tunnels don’t actually go under the Temple Mount (this is not allowed), but rather north along the buried section of the platform along the west, but you could tell how much history was in the place by how deep the old stuff went.  There were times when we would be standing in a space maybe 30 feet high.  At the top of the space, there were dark doorways, which, I imagine, if you were to somehow gain access to, you would be in a little room, and maybe you could break down a door, go up a narrow flight of stone steps, and be in some very old, dusty basement in the Muslim Quarter.  At the same time, we were standing right next to the buried Western Wall, and we could look down below us, past the railing, and it would go down for at least another 40 feet below our feet, with passages and buried rooms below us, as well.  It was very impressive.