Jerusalem’s Old City
After my walk from Ramallah to Jerusalem I spent a day wandering around. As usual I was drawn to the Old City. Looking down from the Mount of Olives to the east, the Old City stretches from the golden Dome of the Rock on Haram A-Sharif (Temple Mount), across the Muslim and Christian Quarters, with modern Jerusalem on the other side.
The Old City offered its usual array of sights, as well as sounds and smells not captured here. I did record sounds of a Christian prayer group wandering past the 8th Station on Via Dolorosa, which maybe I’ll figure out how to post someday. The passing prayer groups were of various origins – Philipino, Spanish-speaking, English-speaking. Pretty constant.
This guy was selling freshly squeezed juice to tourists going into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Coming into the Old City from Damascus Gate, as I did the day before at the end of my day hike, I was once again in the midst of the busy market.
Within moments I passed a house in the Muslim Quarter apparently taken over by Jewish settlers, its Israeli flags making sure no one missed the ownership.
At the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, the tour groups were abundant, their guides holding umbrellas so their charges wouldn’t get lost.
Also at the Western Wall plaza was continuing excavation. Jerusalem’s thousands of years of passing civilizations makes me think any resolution over its future status will unlikely be permanent.
But for some people, pushing carts up steep stone streets, dodging tourists, the Old CIty is just another neighborhood.
I ate lunch at one of the many almost-empty restaurants in the Christian Quarter. I paid a shekel to use a nice modern bathroom in the sparkling Jewish Quarter near the Western Wall. I wandered some more.
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