Old City of Jerusalem

After our Dead Sea excursion, we took the bus back to Jerusalem. We walked back to our hotel to clean up, so we could visit the Old City for the rest of the day. It was about a 10-minute walk from our apartment to the Jaffa Gate. We stopped and visited some tourist shops. One young gentleman asked my mom how many camels she wanted for me, and when mom told him I was already taken, he asked Ryan how much for Elsa! Let's just say it was an awkward conversation, and we ran out of his shop as soon as we purchased our souvenirs!

As we made our way through the stone-paved streets, we followed signs to the Room of the Last Supper and King David's Tomb. Growing up in Sunday school, I learned and read about the upper room where Jesus and his disciples partook of the Passover meal before His crucifixion.  This is the supposed site of the upper room, and I couldn’t help but imagine Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper unfolding before my eyes. We then visited David's Tomb, but there were so many people praying that we did not want to disturb anyone, so we left to visit the Western Wall. The Wall is also known as the Kotel and is a very important site to the Jewish people. It is especially important, as it is believed to have been the closest to the Holy of Holies in the temple. People from around the world come to visit, pray, or leave a message to God and place it in the wall. 

We then made our way through the Muslim quarter to get to the Mount of Olives. As it was getting later, we noticed there were fewer tourists. At one point, an Israeli police officer called out to us and asked us who we were and where we were from. Ryan answered that we were visiting from Texas. The officer told us that we could not go any further as the area was closed at that time. So, we turned around and detoured down another street (which happened at least twice) and exited the Old City. 

We had intended on walking up through the Mount of Olives to catch a panoramic view of the Old City, but a taxi driver stopped us before we started and told us it was a long, steep walk. He only charged 5 NIS per person, so we didn’t argue since we had been walking all day. (They may have worn sandals over 2,000 years ago, but a non-slip shoe might have worked out better!) We arrived at the top in time to see the sun setting behind the Dome of the Rock. It was beautiful. 

Exhausted from our day, we let the same taxi driver take us back to our apartment, and ended the evening with dinner at McDonalds and made a few souvenir stops. Ryan reserved a taxi using a service called Gett (similar to Uber) for our transportation to the airport the following afternoon. But our trip wasn’t over yet…we still had the whole morning the next day, and we were not about to pass up the opportunity to do some more sightseeing!