Mt Zion

Today we took to public transport catching the bus a minutes walk down the road from where we are staying into central Jerusalem, then catching the light rail to Jaffa gate at the old city. The public transport system is modern, cheap and always on time - or so it seems. Two things about Israel that keep us on our toes is lack of English language signs and currency. There are a few bi-lingual English language signs but much less than in Jordan so for example today both bus and train where 100% Hebrew, but we managed OK and did't get lost.

The other challenge is the currency. $1NZ is about 3 Shekels so we are always dividing by 3 as we hand over our 500, 200 and 100 shekel notes. We are big spenders!

Once we reached the old city we went to Christ Christ Anglican Church right near New Gate and Jaffa Gate for a coffee. It is a real haven for stressing pilgrims. Then we set off through the Armenian Quarter and out of the walls to Mt Zion and where the City of David used to be. It turned out to be an area where Religious Jews live. Photo 1 is a statue of King David outside his tomb. We found some stairs so went up them to find ourselves on top of a building with good views, and hence the short video. What we didn't know at the time was we were on the roof of the Synagogue that houses the tomb. When we went down another set of steps we ended up in the Synagogue with a service going on with the religious Jews doing their thing. Only men were allowed in so I put a kafer on and followed other curious gentiles through the Synagogue into the tomb area and back out again, without the Jewish worshippers missing a beat.

We then walked down Mt Zion and back into the old city through Dung Gate with the Wailing Wall close by. It was rainning pretty hard so we didn't go in again but climbed up into the Jewish Quater where we could see it clearly - Photo 2. We got lost going through the Jewish Quarter and ended up on the roofs where we could look down onto the narrow streets. We got down eventually and weaved our way through the streets back to the Christian Quarter eventually finding the Church of the Holy Sepluchre. Because of the rain we went in again and went right down into the lower crypts and sat there for a while watching people. Three different monks, Catholic, Orthodox and Marionite, came one after another doing their incense run. Smelt nice. The church is run by the three denominations and in the not so recent past they have had sharp disagreements that have come to blows, so the key to the church is symbolically held by an Arab shop keeper just up the road.

But we did grace in the place. On the second bottom level there is an alter and I think the Catholics were about to have a service there. However four youg Muslim girls arrived and began to take selfies right up at the altar, laughing and carrying on. The priest just stood their with a smile on his face and eventually, after about 5 minutes, the girls suddenly realised that lots of people were watching them. They made an as dignified retreat as they could. We were surprised to see Muslims in probably the No 1 holy site in town. There were really cheeky.

We made our way back to Christchurch and had soup and bread for lunch, 40 Shekels for both. Then we did one more run down into the old city for old times sake, then walked up Yafo Street (Picture 3) back to the central bus station.

What do religious Jews wear to protect their big black rimmed hats? They wear shopping bags. Still got the flu so not sure what we will be up to tomorrow. Last full day in Israel.