Hashimi Hotel Jerusalem

Our Jerusalem experience started the second we got out of the cab. We stayed in the old city, right by the Damascus Gate. It was really cool until we had to schlep our bags (I have the biggest/heaviest bag in the world) down several flights of stairs, through a very busy open-air market, and up several flights of stairs into our hotel) ... just picture chaos! We had enough time to check in and throw our bags down before heading to our next meeting at the Jerusalem Center for Women.

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Saturday, Feb 14 Day 10 in Jordan We finish packing and leave. The manager tells the taxi driver where to take us. These taxis are metered! We get to the bus station and he takes us to a taxi stand. As soon as we get out the drivers all crowd around us asking where do we want to go and say border. We take our packs out of the taxi we came in and pay him off. We ask where is the bus and they tell us no more bus for today, the bridge closes at 11 a.m. I think this is stupid, what international ...

Jerusalem is an amazing city, and the Old Town is just breath taking. Alex and I were staying at a hostel called El Hashimi, right by the Damascus Gate. Beautiful sunrise views over the Golden Dome of the mosque and Mount of the Olives from their roof terrace.

Old Jerusalem can be parsed and counted in many ways: 7 gates in (Stephens, Herods, Damascus, New, Jaffa, Zion, Dung), 4 quarters, 3 religions, but to me--there are 2 ways that make more sense...Rooftop Jerusalem and Street Level Jerusalem. I'd read in one of the tour guide books that Jerusalem became overburdened with spiritual significance: Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son, Solomon's temple, Christ's life and death, Muhammad's night journeys. And I'd read that it was small and humble. I ...

On our very first night in Jerusalem, we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall. Both were quiet with only a few visitors. In the next few days, we would return to both. On that first night, we walked slow and quiet through the old, dark Church of the Holy Sepulchre, not fully comprehending what we were seeing. Inside this building is the rock of Golgotha (or what was once the hill known as Calvary) and the hillside of Christ's tomb. This church is the last 5 stations o...

The Jewish Quarter is a very small area of the Old City, and is much more modern. Over the years, this area has been occupied, emptied, re-established, evacuated, destroyed--and over the past 40 years reconstructed. On our first night in Jerusalem, we made our way down to the Western Wall. The Western Wall is "open" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every week. Signs lead you through the narrow, twisting streets and eventually into a tunnel where you go through a metal detector and bags are sear...

I should start by saying that the Muslim Quarter was perhaps the most fascinating quarter of all. It is alive--loud, busy, seething with people until the wee hours of the morning. Intense. It's dark in the day, lit by light of the shopping stalls and the sliver of daylight sneaking into the narrow streets between the awnings. Shops spill into the tiny ancient streets, a sampling of everything out in view. There are the shops selling clothes--jeans on racks in the center, undergarments and soc...

All week long, we've looked over at the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. We've seen the hillside of graves from the ramparts, from the rooftops, from the Lutheran Tower. On Saturday, it was time to go over there--getting there early enough to watch the sunrise on Jerusalem and to visit the onion-domed Russian Church which is only open for visitors a few hours on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We got out before sunrise and headed through a quiet Muslims Quarter and out Stephen's Gate. There must have ...

Travel days always bring some level of angst. This one was a big one. We were crossing from Jordan to Israel via the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge. Mark Hamilton had warned us that this was one of the few border crossings in the world that still made a big deal of crossing from one country to another. I'd read travelers tales of long waits, intense questioning, lost bags and unexpected closures. Our taxi sped out of Amman on this bright morning and hurtled through the streets rimmed with eastwa...

I picked two hotels for our stay in Jerusalem. One is the Hashimi Hotel. The other is the New Imperial Hotel. They are somewhat similar is several ways. They are both in the Old City. They are both very old hotels and used as Jerusalem hotels for centuries, yet they have been recently refurbished and brought up to date. They both got mostly somewhat good reviews on the internet. The New Imperial Hotel is near Jafa Gate, while the Hashimi is nearer the center of the old city but may be closer...