Touring Jerusalem

The last few days of June we spent touring the holy city and watching football matches! Unfortunately I had to make another trip to the hospital in East Jerusalem so that took away a lot of our time to sightsee. However on Tuesday we got to visit Mt. Zion, which is outside the walls of the old city. There lies the Church of the Dormition, thought to be where Mary went into a final "deep sleep." In the underground level there is a beautiful candlelit area where a type of shine/tomb is dedicated to the mother of Jesus. Also around the corner from the church is the supposed Room of the Last Supper where Jesus spent his last meal with his disciples and so famously depicted by Leonardo DaVinci. Now only a non-decorated (and fairly unimpressive) empty room, it's still amazing to think this was where that infamous night took place.

On Wednesady we started early to make it to the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount. Since the Dome now is a mosque, it is closed to all non-Muslims and the hours to even visit the site are very restricted to a few hours a day. Even with not being able to see much with my bad eye, entering form the Western Wall area and going to the Temple feels like a special experience. When you finally get that first view of the Dome of the Rock wiht the blue mosaic tiling outside and the gold dome on top, it is a breathtaking sight. Hopefully one day people will be able to visit inside and see the actual rock. Since the area is holy to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism it is a bit of a shame that more people do not get to visit and appreciate it. Afterwards we went to the Mt. of Olives, a holy place in itself, and entered Mary's Tomb, walked up the mountain, and searched (but failed) to find the Chuch of Ascension. There really are quite a lot of olive trees there.

That afternoon we had the (strangely) exciting opportunity to visit the West Bank and visit with a friend of mine from college, John Sakakini. We also had to get another Jordanian visa to be able to get to the Amman airport the day after, so Marissa, Aaron (a new friend from the hostel), and I hopped on a minibus to Ramallah. We had no problems getting through the checkpoint, as fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you see it) foreigners and especially Americans can pass by anywhere they want to go. The whole experience was easier than we thought an soon we were back in the Arab world- it is notable different from Jerusalem from the first few seconds. It was amazing! Seeing the difference between the two areas was really interesting and I think it's important that travelers at least make an effort to look at both sides when visiting this part of the world. With a little of my Arabic we managed to get a taxi to the consulate and got our visa with no real problems. While waiting for my friend to finish work, we got some food and took a walk to Al Muqata to visit Yasser Arafat's tomb. Ramallah is the political capital for Palestine, and so offices and government buildings are all around. Arafat's tomb is nice, but simple, guarded by soldiers and set in front of his old home and office. Next to that building now sits the office of Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority.

We luckily got to spend a few hours with my friend. A Palestinian-American now spending a year working and living in Ramallah, he showed us around the city, told us a lot of interesting info about life there as well as the current problems/improvements, and even took us to his favorite bar in Ramallah. I'm really glad we had the chance to visit him as well as enter the West Bank. We had no problems and so many people in Ramallah greeted us with a warm Ahlan Wa-Sahlan (Welcome), probably excited that a foreigner took the time to visit their city- we did not see any other tourists there.

I really enjoyed our time in Israel/Palestine, even though I could not physically see a lot of it and we missed a lot of important places that I will just have to return one day to visit. One of my goals we did managed to accomplish though, and that was finding bagels! Yum!