Jerusalem

Morning

I, who can hardly eat breakfast, should be a globular mess from this meal alone today.  The coffee was SO GOOD.  I think my body thought it was lunch.  I have no other excuse for the massive amount of food I inhaled.  And in Israel, they have figured out that more sugar is always better, so you won’t find any stingy sugar packets.  The hummus is amazing.  I have it every meal they offer it, (which includes breakfast.)

We were on the bus by 7:45 this morning and headed to our first stop:  The Old City of Jerusalem.  This is the site of the original Temple and the second, however, both have been destroyed and now a Muslim Mosque stands in their place.  There are Israeli guards there, but obviously the Muslim’s still maintain their presence.   Apparently this compromise has made the Old City a much safer place in the past ten years.  This is what the Bible calls Mt. Zion.   The view it offers is incredible.  No picture would do it justice.  We could see the Mount of Olives very well from the Temple Mount.  We entered the Muslim quarters of the Old City where Muslims live and work as we made our way to the Wailing Wall.

The Wailing Wall or the Western Wall is full.  By that I mean, one cannot easily find a spot to touch it and pray.  I did have a prayer that I had written for the wall.  I prayed there for over 10 minutes.  I wanted to stay longer, but so many were waiting for spots for their prayers.

Then we went to the SW corner of the Wailing Wall.  They believe Jesus actually walked here to tend to all of his Temple affairs – money changing, purchasing for the purpose of sacrifice, and the ritual bathing before approaching the Temple.

Next, we went to the site where Peter betrayed Christ.  There is a church here called St. Peter in Gallicantu.  This was a very interesting site including a preserved dungeon where not only the apostle Peter and John were held, but also where Jesus was held while he awaited trial.

We had lunch at a Palestinian run hotel restaurant.  This was good. But this was also the beginning of my sugar coma.  We had about a 20-minute bus ride to get to the City of David (very cool)!  But before entering we watched a short movie about the excavations IN THE DARK.  Coma be gone!  (I actually nodded off.  It was a 3D film and good.  I guess my body was still confused about why I was awake from the time change.  I did catch the 3D glasses before they hit the floor.)  We left the video and went to Warren’s Shaft (a spiral staircase that goes deep into the hills/rocks) and entered Hezekiah’s Tunnel (a waterway for the city).  This woke me up – cold water like a mountain spring.  This was all part of a water system to allow the city to have it’s own sustainable water source, therein making it harder to defeat in battle.  As historians have told us, that did not stop the Babylonians (Baghdad) years later.

This was the end of our day.  Except that four of us struck out on a hunt for bottled water.  So why not peruse the city streets?  You guessed it, we did!  It was a beautiful sunny day here today and I was so thankful!

Other interesting tidbits:

-The city is full of stray cats.  Everywhere.

-The traffic is almost touching like in NYC.  It is also unforgiving.  If you take a wrong turn,there’s not room for turning around.

-They celebrate 3 Christmases here in Jerusalem

Sorry for the novel.  Remember there’s no quiz, so you can read the title only if my writing is too laborious to read!  Love to you all!

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