Holy Land Hotel Jerusalem

... Herods rule around the time of Christ. <br><br>That night we walked to the Jaffa Gate and entered the Old City which is a bustling market place dotted with a large number of religious sites relevant to a number of religions. The most fascinating aspect of the Old City is that it has 4 quarters in which Jews, Muslims, Christians and Armenians live - sometimes in harmony, sometimes not. We had dinner at a restaurant in the Armenian Quarter which ...

Monday, October 4, 2009, C.E. <br><br>Again, I&#8217;ve fallen behind and am catching up on the last 3 plus days. Our second attempt to do Mea She&#8217;arim proved more successful than the first. <br><br>After being turned around a bit by the address numbering system on Mea She&#8217;arim Street we found our first destination &#8211; the shop where we hoped to find a shofar to buy. In the end, we bought 2 &#8211; a large and small one &#8211; and lots of other &#8220 ...

... time I come here. There's even a crane building a newer building. Shame, how many buildings does one coastline really need?<br>There's also a view of the top of a really pretty mosque. I remember when I used to work in this area, we faced a mosque near the old clock tower in the main square. I worked nights until 5am and as I left, the sun rose and I heard the sounds of the morning prayer from the top. I dunno what it is, but technology has not improved the quality of the sound ...

... entrance to Zedekah's Cave. The cave that King Zedehah had hidden in from the Babylonians in 587BC. At this part of the city it is clear to see how this Northern part of the city came up to level ground. You can see the bedrock exposed 11-15 feet above the street and the wall is build on top of this. <br>We were now on a hunt to find the garden tomb and quickly, as it was around 10:45 and the garden closed at noon. With a little ...

... but we were not successful. However we did buy a really great shofar and a velvet bag with the Messianic seal for $100 and Addison got to do some shrewd bargaining in an electronics store. <br>In this part of the city virtually no one spoke any or much English. Again this is pretty amazing considering that Israeli Hebrew did not even exist a century ago. Upon arriving at the Jaffa gate we decided to go refresh ourselves at the ...

... of food, calls for bread, and arrivals of new guests who had to be accommodated through a loud and unnecessarily complicated process of putting up more tables. At one point the chicken spilled, which led directly to half an hour of the Floridian's jokes &#8211; hey guy! Why&#8217;d you drop that? We were the chopped liver table, now we got the klutz table! Look at that, guy! Got sauce down his shirt! Looks like he was drooling! &#8211; and some of ...

... my tzevet could not control our laughter in the classroom when our commander wanted to debrief the first week of the course. As I mentioned in a previous entry, it is hardest to stop laughing when you are not allowed to laugh. If given five seconds to do so, we would have been fine, but our fear of our commander's wrath was a different story (she punished us with a tremendous amount of timed running). I describe this moment as meaningful not only because I have never had to laugh as ...

... been an issue if Old Jerusalem was a normal city, but it certainly isn't! It's basically just a bunch of narrow ally ways. So, the only way to secure the area near the church, was to completely block most of the allies within the Old city. Nicole and I attempted to go out and explore that morning, but failed miserably b/c of the Pope Show. <br><br ...

Today we visited the Knesset and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum of Israel. More about Yad Vashem later. The Knesset was closed for recess so we went all the way up there for nothing. We did see four fighter jets fly over while we were standing there. They were in formation and did a big loop-d-loop right there above us. Mom was in the bathroom (with the camera!) and didn't see it. More later ... we're eating pizza tonight. Yad Vashem boy ...

... not have walked along the ramparts. This means I really need to come back. The Muslim Quarter is less noisy, less boisterous, less touristicky than all other areas. Maybe people are afraid, maybe the area is too poor to attract tourists, there are not many "tourist" attractions, although the Via Dolorosa starts not far from there to end at the Holy Sepulchre. There are some churches along the many stations of the Cross, and I will visit some on my way.