The Holy City

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. 

As was expected, the most popular sites were quite crowded, including the site of the crucifiction, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Western Wall.  The first day we wandered into town was a Saturday which is the sabbath day for the Jews.  You have to pass through security, including xray to get into the plaza of the Western Wall and it was crowded with Jewish people in their best clothes.  Unfortunately, no electronic equipment is permitted to be used on the Sabbath so I couldn’t take any photos of the men in their big fur hats and curly side burns.

Jerusalem  is probably the one place where religion is out in the open.  There’s no escaping it – it’s everywhere and the fact that there are 3 different factions all living together is really quite fascinating.  I heard a saying from our tour guide – “Jerusalem is united by its city but divided by its people”.

We went for a short trip to the West Bank to see Bethlehem.  This meant passing into the Palestinian Territories and going through an army checkpoint, so we had to take our passports.  To be honest it didn’t seem that much different to Jerusalem.  Probably quite similar to towns in Jordan.  Our taxi driver, who drove us to the Church of the Nativity, was quite at pains to tell us that the West Bank is completely safe.  “Nothing dangerous ever happens here” he said.

The new city is vastly different from the old.  It’s full of swanky apartment buildings, shopping malls and trendy coffee shops.  We didn’t spend a lot of time there – to us it was just another city. 

 The big problem to us here was the cost of everything.  It is terribly expensive.  We found it difficult to feed the 6 of us for under $30 for dinner.  The best option quickly turned out to be shawarma’s which are like a doner kebab.  Still not terribly cheap but the best option available to us.

We spent a week wandering the alleys of the old city before returning to Jordan (this time the border crossing only took 4 hours!) en route to Istanbul.