#weepingwall

It was really cool to go to the Old City of Jerusalem and spend the day walking around. In some ways, it’s exactly what I expected but in other ways not so much.  I had no idea people actually lived within the walls, but that just added to the majestic feel.  SO MUCH SHOPPING here!  They have every souvenir you could want to buy.  They even had a gym.  I should have taken a picture because it was the funniest thing.  A gym pumping hard electronic music surrounded by cobblestone.  

We went to the Western Wall, aka Weeping Wall, which is the holiest place for people of the Jewish faith to pray.  Really cool to witness all these people praying here.

Behind it lies Temple Mount which is the holiest place for Jewish people. We did a tour of the western walls as well, because there are tunnels underground that walk along it.

This is kind of a. trippy picture but it’s actually looking downwards.  They’re doing a lot of archaeological digging here.  The bottom is the valley, I’m looking over a barricade.

Old pieces of rock cut to be used for the wall but not used. After the tour, we stumbled upon the Prison of Christ.

I’m spiritual, not really religious but it was cool to see this stuff, especially since I grew up Catholic.

Some stations of the cross:

From here, we drove to Nazareth where we would be staying the night.  Jesus grew up in Nazareth! The drive there was fine until we actually got to the old city of Nazareth.   In Nazareth they don't really operate on addresses - more so word of mouth (i.e., go down the street with the shop and turn right) and we didn't realize this. So when we plugged in 6139 Nazareth St. into the GPS, it hadn't occurred to us that this number was essentially moot. Basically, we're following the directions and as we get to Nazareth we enter a subdivision where the roads get smaller and smaller, steeper and steeper (I'm talking REALLY narrow and REALLY steep; let's just make that clear). We wind up at a dead end where I had to do a 3-point turn that turned into a 40-point turn.During this stressful expedition, an older gentleman in a nightie stood by ominously watching us. I was afraid he was pissed that we were on his property. And of course I was having a really hard time getting out of their alleyway. He didn't speak English and when his wife came out, it became apparent that neither did she. Shortly thereafter another man came out of the apartment who spoke English and he hopped in the car to help us out. The original man and woman asked me inside. So I went in and was offered tea. By the time Mike came in, members of the family were trickling in and we were offered delicious sweets, tomatoes & cucumber snacks, some olive oil/cheese dip pita appetizer, and then a pasta entree made by the man who helped move the car, all the while us protesting [lightly] because they had already been generous enough. They were so welcoming and it was such a completely unexpected, surreal experience. We stayed for a couple of hours talking and eating and after exchanging information we headed off to our hostel (which we still weren't able to find until we went through two more sets of people to ask).I think sometimes we forget, in our busy lives, that everyone is just human. And just because we're busy and we have all this shit to do, that doesn't mean we should ignore our neighbors or be unkind to them. This family selflessly helped us, went above and beyond, and made us feel like one of their own.