Category — Israel

One thing Jerusalem is not short on is churches and mosques.  There is a mosque on virtually every block.  When we first came to the Middle East it was kind of cool to hear the call to prayer echo around the city, but we have decided that in Jerusalem it gets a bit much because there are so many mosques and they all sing at the same time in different keys, so it creates an absolute racket.  Add to that the church bells ringing and you have a noise that only God could love!

The noise aside (it’s only 5 times a day after all!) the old city of Jerusalem has a really interesting vibe.  It’s made up of 4 quarters – Jewish, Christian, Muslim & Armenian – all within one square kilometre inside the city walls.  It feels like it’s way bigger than that because there are so many alleys and laneways snaking throughout.  The main thoroughfares are lined with gift & souvenir shops, spices, lollies, religious trinkets, vegetables & kebabs etc etc.

We found a hostel just inside Jaffa Gate in the Christian quarter and wandered the streets for a few days.  Just to wander was great.  We also took a walking tour which took us past all the holy sites and explained a lot about the differences between the religious groups here.  [Read more →]

It turned out that the day we were to go to Jerusalem was a Friday, which is special to both Muslims and Jews and so the border closes at 2.30pm.  We were advised to go as early as possible because of this and so we arrived at 8.30.

The departures office was full of backpacks and kids and Muslim women.  It didn’t take long to realise something was up.  After about half an hour, we discovered that the process to be stamped out of Jordan which normally takes 5 minutes was delayed – their one computer was not working properly and it was now taking about an hour to process one passport.

After about 3 hours, the immigration officers, who up till now had all been sitting around the computer and looking at each other with quizzical looks on their faces, decided that maybe writing the passport details out could be an option and so they started doing that.  An hour later, we were all loaded onto the bus to take us across the border.  We were all a bit worried by now because the Israeli side is supposed to be the hard part and we’d just spent hours on the Basil Fawlty.. sorry… Jordanian side. [Read more →]