Gave C a break and returned to the golden city on a tour bus with 16 other lost souls. Interesting mix. Spanish Italian, English, Canadian (3 big, soft computer nerds), Serbian, Filipino, and a smattering of American, all Californian. I normally avoid tours but this one was cheap and easy. Our guide was a pleasant Scottish woman who speaks, in addition to English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, and can translate ancient Chinese. I took her for a failed former nun, but after several catty comments about religion, I decided I was wrong. Our driver was an elderly but vigorous israeli man who found me at lunch to enlist my aid in filling out some kind of banking forms for Citibank in New York. I didn't charge him.
Hit the high points. Began at the Mount of Olives with a vast, incredible panorama of old and new Jerusalem. 2000 years ago, the mount was covered in olive trees, thus its name. Today, it is covered in churches, souvenir shops, graves and, yes, olive trees. (People are dying to get in here--old joke--because those buried on the mount will be the first to rise when the Messiah, ahem, returns, etc. It is expensive, I am told.)
The garden of Gesthemane is a stones throw away, as is every notable site from the final years, weeeks, days of Christ. Even in my jaded mind, it is incredible to realize that so many key historical sites, biblical and otherwise (let's not even address the Jewish and Muslim sites) sit in such a compessed area. It is a tourist's dream, really, making sightseeing a breeze.
We descended from the mount of olives to the old city, entering the fortified walls and making our way to the Wailing Wall again. Today it was the Sabbath, so we were warned not to take photographs, smoke, or talk on cellphones at the wall (we need those rules in Muni). Lots of praying going on. We gawked for awhile and then made our way with the other weary tourist hordes through the tiny streets of the old quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (again!). Saw a few new sites I had missed before, and it is always fun to hear one tourist guide give a completely or somewhat contradictory account of the history of a particular site.
Ate lunch at a kibbutz, drank fresh pomegranate juice, and finished the day at the tomb of King David (a mess) and the room of the Last Supper, which coincidentally (and unbelievably) sits directly above King David's tomb. Someone is making something up...there's s lot of this kind of thing in the holy land.
Stopped on the way back to Tel Aviv at a truck stop smothered in Elvis memorabilia, for some reason.
Dined on a giant chicken bagel thingy with C and packed for Jordan.
Writing from BenGurion airport waiting for the fight to Eilat, having cleared rigorous El Al security. Will take a taxi to the border when I land, and cross into Jordan. If all goes as planned, will be picked up by jeep tomorrow morning to head into the desert and encounter Petra! Later!
Hit the high points. Began at the Mount of Olives with a vast, incredible panorama of old and new Jerusalem. 2000 years ago, the mount was covered in olive trees, thus its name. Today, it is covered in churches, souvenir shops, graves and, yes, olive trees. (People are dying to get in here--old joke--because those buried on the mount will be the first to rise when the Messiah, ahem, returns, etc. It is expensive, I am told.)
The garden of Gesthemane is a stones throw away, as is every notable site from the final years, weeeks, days of Christ. Even in my jaded mind, it is incredible to realize that so many key historical sites, biblical and otherwise (let's not even address the Jewish and Muslim sites) sit in such a compessed area. It is a tourist's dream, really, making sightseeing a breeze.
We descended from the mount of olives to the old city, entering the fortified walls and making our way to the Wailing Wall again. Today it was the Sabbath, so we were warned not to take photographs, smoke, or talk on cellphones at the wall (we need those rules in Muni). Lots of praying going on. We gawked for awhile and then made our way with the other weary tourist hordes through the tiny streets of the old quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (again!). Saw a few new sites I had missed before, and it is always fun to hear one tourist guide give a completely or somewhat contradictory account of the history of a particular site.
Ate lunch at a kibbutz, drank fresh pomegranate juice, and finished the day at the tomb of King David (a mess) and the room of the Last Supper, which coincidentally (and unbelievably) sits directly above King David's tomb. Someone is making something up...there's s lot of this kind of thing in the holy land.
Stopped on the way back to Tel Aviv at a truck stop smothered in Elvis memorabilia, for some reason.
Dined on a giant chicken bagel thingy with C and packed for Jordan.
Writing from BenGurion airport waiting for the fight to Eilat, having cleared rigorous El Al security. Will take a taxi to the border when I land, and cross into Jordan. If all goes as planned, will be picked up by jeep tomorrow morning to head into the desert and encounter Petra! Later!
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