ירושלים | Jerusalem

We took a trip to Jerusalem this week. We left Ramla on Wednesday after volunteering and stayed there until Thursday night.

On Wednesday evening, we went to a wine tasting at the Israel Museum. It was 60 shekels to taste samples from wineries all over Israel, as well as for admission to all of the museum's galleries. We wanted to visit the gallery in which the Dead Sea scrolls are located, but unfortunately we waited til 9:15 to check it out, and it turned out that the galleries closed at 9:00.

After the wine tasting, we went to dinner at a restaurant called Focaccia Bar. They had really good cheeseburgers (which are hard to find here because most places are kosher) and really good Focaccia bread that was actually more like naan.

That night, we stayed at the Citadel Youth Hostel in the Old City. It is located in a 700-year-old building, which was pretty cool. The lobby of the hostel has an arched stone ceiling, like it hasn't been touched in centuries. The hostel is on St. Mark's Street, right inside Jaffa Gate, between the Christian Quarter and the Armenian Quarter, and there were wonderful views of all of the Old City from the roof. As good as the location was, the hostel was terrible. The management didn't appear to know what they were doing. The "bed" they gave me was a foam pad on the roof with 30 others, which would have been fine, except that there was someone in it when I got back for the night. So the guy at the front desk suggested that I sleep on a stone "couch" in the "lounge" which was really loud, so I went back up to the roof and slept on the linoleum floor. Lovely. But for all the drawbacks, there were some pluses. I heard the muezzin's call to prayer from al-Aqsa Mosque at 4:20 in the morning, which, despite waking me up, was actually kind of beautiful. And the cool night air was pretty soothing after a long day.

On Thursday, we woke up early to get breakfast and then do a bit of shopping at the David Street marketplace. We got some souvenirs, and the girls got some pretty skirts from a twelve-fingered Arab guy who gave us tea and fruit before totally ripping us off. We got falafel from a small place on haShalshelet (Street of the Chain) before trying unsuccessfully to visit the Temple Mount. (We tried to go in from the wrong direction.) We went to the Kotel (Western Wall) and then walked up the ramp from the Western Wall Plaza to the Temple Mount. Since 1967, non-Muslims have been allowed on the Temple Mount, although only for three hours a day, and non-Muslim prayer is prohibited. It was believed that the location of the "Holy of Holies" was unknown, which is why many Jews choose not to visit the Temple Mount. They are afraid of accidentally stepping on the spot of the "Holy of Holies," which was reserved only for the High Priest in ancient times (i.e. it is simply too sacred for us mere mortals to visit). Many people are now of the opinion that the Holy of Holies was, in fact, located in or near the current location of the Dome of the Rock, which would make it acceptable for Jews to set foot on the Temple Mount without breaking the law of the Torah. I personally think that all the hassle is ridiculous, but that, of course, would make me an infidel. Anyway, we did choose to ignore that risk and visit the Temple Mount. It was definitely worth it. We were not allowed inside the Dome of the Rock or al-Aqsa mosque, but the exterior architecture of both buildings is truly amazing.

That evening, we took a tour of the Western Wall Tunnels. The Wall was much bigger than what is visible today. Most of it was covered and hidden by buildings in the Mamluk era. Authorities have excavated a small area under buildings in the Arab Quarter so we can see the entire length of the Wall, as well as other ancient architecture. See this page for details. I had already been on that tour before, in 2004, but they've excavated more since then and added more information to the tour than I had seen, so it was still interesting.

Pictures from the Jerusalem trip are up here.