Free day!

Saturday was an uncharacteristic "free" day for us, by which I simply mean there was no planned activity. However, not wanting to waste the opportunity, we decided to wake up early-ish (~9:30) and go do some exploring on our own. Our mission: see things and buy postcards. Our first stop: the Garden Tomb.

The Garden Tomb is the site where Protestants believe that Jesus was buried. Conveniently, this is practically right down the street from where we live. Bo, Froy, Humberto, Sally, Mike R., and I wandered over there and ended up attaching ourselves onto an English speaking tour. Our tour guide, Phillip, was excellent, filling us in on the history as well as sharing the beliefs and inspirational message attached to the location.


One reason that this is believed to be the site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial is because of the rock formation, which resembles a skull. "Golgotha", the biblical place where Jesus was crucified, means "Skull". We got to see this view later, from the Old City wall:

Next, we wandered into the Old City. After wandering through the market for awhile and debating the possibility of food, Mike, Humberto, and I ended up splitting off from the group and heading back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Unfortunately, the site was much more crowded than yesterday, so we elected to try to come back on a more peaceful day with fewer crowds.

We headed towards the Jaffa Gate, where we investigated the possibility of walking on the ramparts of the Old City wall, something which we were all very excited to do. We each payed 16 shekels, and up we went. Thus started a multitude of picture taking.

Since there is a break in the wall at the Jaffa Gate and since you cannot enter the Temple Mount area, you cannot walk the entire perimeter continuously. So, we started by walking north from the Jaffa Gate, around the north side of the city, and south to the Lion's Gate on the east side. This took a long time. Maybe 2 hours. Mainly because of the picture taking. Walking on the wall was absolutely amazing because of the many views of Jerusalem, both Old and New cities.
We saw a massive shoe sale outside of the Damascus gate:Also, all the gates have grates right above the entrance. This is so you can dump boiling water or oil on your attackers!

Dome of the Rock

By the time we came down from the wall, it was about 2pm, and we were HUNGRY. We wandered back into the market and managed to find a restaurant that served amazing schwarma!
Before and after lunch, we also walked along the Via Dolorosa, or "Way of Suffering", in an attempt to see more of the Stations of the Cross.Next, time for shopping! Back to the market we went. We each bought some souvenirs/gifts, and also managed to find postcards for 1 shekel each! (Now to buy stamps...)

Our shopping successful, we continued on to traverse the other section of the wall ramparts. This route took us south from the Jaffa Gate, around nearly to the Dung Gate.

Looking north

View to the south

We then came down and debated the tradeoffs between trekking back across the city to the apartment or continuing on our adventure and hoping someone would pick us up before the dinner excursion. Adventuring won.

We continued out through the Zion Gate to Mount Zion, on the south side of the city, in an attempt to visit King David's tomb. This, we did manage to find. However, our subsequent attempt to find the room where the Last Supper supposedly took place was unsuccessful, and we decided that it was probably closed anyway, given that it was late in the day on Shabbat. Instead, we found an interesting sculpture.

Back we went to the Jaffa Gate, where we hung out on the grass outside the Old City before meeting up with Max at the MEET office to go to dinner. Dinner was delicious, and was a fantastic end to an awesome day.

Stairs leading up the the ramparts.