Jerusalem

This week we went to Jerusalem.  I don't know what my deal was that day but I really didn't pay a lot of attention to the tour guides. I feel kind of bad about it now, like I kind of wasted the opportunity to hear cool things. 


On the way down we stopped at the IDF tank museum. We climbed up on the tanks.  (That's about all I can give you about that.)

First stop in Jerusalem was,  Jabal Mukabbir.  It's high up so it's a nice look out point.  From there we were able to see the dome of the rock and the old city, part of the Israeli West Bank barrier, the dead sea and into Jordan. The part I thought was most interesting was seeing the separation wall. Its one of those things that you know exists and you hear about but when you actually see it you think, "Oh shit, it's real."

You can see the separation wall on the right side of the photo.

After we took some pictures and talked a little bit about what we were looking at, we went to this "time elevator" ride/movie thing about the history of Jerusalem and walked around a little bit.

Then we went to the Kotel (Western Wall, Wailing Wall). We had some time to go to the wall, put in a note, pray, look around, do whatever you wanted to do there. That day there was going to be a ceremony for soldiers who had just finished basic training and were going into Golani, one of the more well known combat units in the IDF. We didn't see the actual ceremony but everything was set up, the new guns were lined up, all the soldiers and their families were there.  It definitely added a different element to being at the wall, especially because soon that will be some of our guys from the ulpan. 

Evan is in Israel on Birthright and was in Jerusalem the same day so we thought we might be able to see each other. Actually, I was arriving to the Kotel area, just as he was leaving that but we weren't able to meet up because of the schedules of our groups.  Kind of weird (and a little frustrating) to be so close but not see each other.  We'll catch up with each other when he is in Tel Aviv though.

From there we went into these tunnels under the Kotel. (This is the part I wish i was paying more attention to.) We walked down along the wall but underground. The wall actual continues several stories below what is now ground level. Down there is supposed to be where the most holy spot is, that we can get to.  One pretty cool thing that the tour guide pointed out is that the Jewish world in the diaspora prays towards Israel, if you are in Israel you pray toward Jerusalem, if you are in Jerusalem you pray toward the Kotel, if you are at the Kotel you pray toward the place that we were standing.

We finished the day walking around on Ben Yehuda Street.

It was a pretty long day, we saw/did a lot of things.
It was fun, but next time I'll pay better attention