Jerusalem, Jerusalem

DAY 1

Greetings from this ancient, amazing place! We have toured for two days with Andre and Tony, local Arab Christians who have grown up in the city. Saturday we walked all around the old city, starting from our hotel, which is called Christ Church Guest House, positioned just inside the Jaffa Gate in the old city wall.

Tony was helpful in many ways, including his descriptions of locations that are considered 1) 99% sure they were the authentic place of a historic happening (the Last supper and Pentecost area, for example), 2) "nearby" the exact location of a historic happening, and 3) the "traditional" location for a holy site or a site celebrated by visitors to the city as having connection to a historical happening.

To summarize -- because that is the only logical thing to do -- we soaked in every minute, particularly the local/mid-eastern/cultural understandings of the time in history and the dynamics that have shaped the place. We were able to touch the Western (Wailing) wall and pray there with many of Jews with their prayer books (it was Shabbat/Sabbath).

The men's section is on the left, the women's on the right (see a bit of space discrepency there? ;). Everyone has to walk backwards away from the wall, out of respect for the holiness of the place.

We walked most of the 14 stations along the Via Dolorosa (stations of the cross), starting in the Muslim Quarter in the NE section of the Old City. The stations end in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That is the #1 category (99% certain) location of Golgotha and the crucifixion. That Church is the two-grey domed one in the third photo.

We did visit a building built upon the site (99%) of the Last Supper and the Pentecost, a very lovely Benedictine church on a site out of the wall (on Mt Zion) where Mary was said to have slept and been raised to heaven. Really fabulous mosaics of women from the Old Testament there.
We enjoyed an Armenia dinner last night in the Armenian quarter just south of us. That is one quarter where tourists are rarely allowed to go, a result of the severe persecution that people has suffered. There are restricted hours for doing that, but we didn't.

We saw a Jewish house with a private guard station built on top of a Muslim home in the Muslim quarter. . .

The girls are intrigued by the market stalls packed in these hilly streets -- and the high pressure tactics of the shopowners..."I'll still love you, even if you don't buy."

And, of course, another three "so cute" orphan cats everywhichway we turn.

* We saw Joy Lapp and Steve Ruby, Boulder Menno friends, who are leading a two-week tour group. They're staying nearby at the Gloria Hotel, also in the Christian Quarter.

Shalom. Until next time.