Journey through Jerusalem

Via Dolorosa
see all photos »

We checked into Jaffa Gate Hostel - DO NOT STAY HERE.  (Got eaten by bed bugs and that's not the worst of it)

There is a free walking tour of the city by Jaffa Gate every day at 11am, so went on that to learn about the city.  It was great, really informative and fun.  The main tower in the Old City is called David's Tower.  It's in the Christian Quarter and it was built way after David but it's big so the crusaders called it that.  Catchy name has just stuck though it's misleading.  Went into the Armenian Quarter.  Dver, our guide, knew we were wondering why Armenians get a quarter of Jerusalem.  In AD301 Armenia became the first christian state ever and pilgrims began travelling to Jerusalem, some stayed and settled there so they have had a corner of the old city for nearly 2000 years.  Now there are about 2500 living there so it's the smallest quarter.  They had a door in there leading to a house that is believed by the Syrian Orthodox Church to be where Jesus had the last supper.  But there are another couple houses claiming that too.  Then we head into the Jewish Quarter and then into the largest, the Muslim Quarter where the suqs are and the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus (and now Italian and Spanish tour groups) carried the cross up to where he was crucified.  We walked up there onto the roof of the Church of the Sepulchre where the Ethiopian monks live.  Dver saw that we thought it was quite random so he explained that Ethiopians have been living in Jerusalem ever since the Queen of Sheba (or Ethiopia) came to visit Solomon.  The Ethiopians believe that she had Solomon's baby and it's quite important to that because their emperor's are believed to be descendants of Solomon (all but one).  We then went to the Wailing Wall where the Jews go to cry over the ruined temple and pray, James went down and had a wail with them and then we all head our separate ways.  We then went and explored the New City which is full of cafes, bars and restaurants.

The Wailing Wall
see all photos »

We continued exploring over the next couple days.  On Friday the muslims go to Temple Mount to pray and the Jews go there too to pray in the Sabbath which is Saturday, or after 14:00 on Friday.  We wanted to go out Lion's Gate to hike up to the Mount of Olives but got caught as everyone was leaving Temple Mount.  We were in the Muslim Quarter and pretty much got trampled by 100,000 muslims leaving prayer!  James got taken out by hundreds of 4 foot 80 year olds.  We tried to lose the crowd but that was impossible so just joined the stampede and pushed our way out with the best of them.  Only, because we went with the flow, we ended up on the other side of the city, back to Jaffa Gate!  We waited until everyone had left and then made our way back to Lion's Gate only to be caught in another stampede as they all left the city to break the day's fast (being Ramadan)!  We finally got out and climbed the mountain (just a hill really but they call every significant hill a mount) for views over Jerusalem.  When we came back down, the Muslim Quarter was empty as everyone feasted behind doors.  Was nice to have the streets to ourselves, we walked through unacosted munching on falafels and hummus.