What a full day we had today! We started with a breakfast at our hotel. When we got downstairs our guide, Madeleine was already waiting for us! We had a quick bite and chatted while we were eating. She had found our blog, which is how she knew what we looked like when we came downstairs. So we talked a little about travel and our plan for the day. The day was already getting hot, in the low 70's with the high supposed to get to about 80. We would be walking most of the day and we also need to follow the dress codes of the holy sites in Jerusalem (long pants and shoes) so it was going to be a hot one!

Next we set out for a taxi that would take us to the Mount of Olives. This is a mountain that looks over the entire city of Jerusalem. It has great views of the Old City and is also the site of several churches, Jewish cemeteries, the latter of which contain over 200,000 graves! It also has some ancient burial sites that we learned were reused after the bones were removed and put in a box, which was the permanent resting place of the person. We also learned about the olive trees and how as long as they are not uprooted, they will continue to send new shoots up from the old system. There are olive trees on the hill that are about 500 years old that are totally hollow with younger trees of about 50 years growing out of them. We toured Dominus Flevet Church, Garden of Gethsamane, Basilica of Agony, and Mary's Tomb on the way down the Mount of Olives. Then we had to climb back up to the Old City of Jerusalem since the city was built on the top of a hill. We made our way to Lion's Gate and into the Muslim quarter.

Once inside we went into a church and courtyard that was well kept by the French and had a very nice garden. Then we climbed down into the remains of an old Roman water cistern where you could still see the arches where the streets and shops would have been. Since Jerusalem is in a dessert figuring out water sources and ways to keep rainwater was very important, and a lot of the archeological findings appear to be around the city's water sources. At this point it was getting near to noon, the hour of prayer for Muslims on Friday. Many of the shops in the Muslim quarter were shutting down for the hour or so while they went to pray. You could hear the call to prayer throughout the city. It was very interesting how trusting people were. Many of the shops closed simply by turning off their lights or putting a cane across the entryway to the store. A few had a young boy stay behind to watch the stand, but not very many! Lucky for us, the falafel stand that Madeleine likes was still open so we had our first taste. We watched the boy making the falafel in a small scoop and ejecting it into the deep fryer…a couple of minutes later we had steaming hot, super fresh falafel. It was very tasty!

Next we took a walk past the Western Wall where first graders were singing and performing a ceremony to get their first prayer book. It was quite cute! At the wall, Madeleine showed us pictures of what the wall used to look like thousands of years ago, and how you could still see some of the remains of the structures, like old bridges and stairways. The town is under constant excavation while they find different areas, and then work to rebuild it in a way that allows people to understand what it would have been like.

We walked through the Jewish quarter which is the most recently renovated area since it was destroyed in the 40s and mostly rebuilt in the 60s after the Israel took it back from Jordan. So the architecture is very different from in the other parts of the Old City. However, all buildings still have to use limestone or limestone facing so that it all looks similar.

Then we made our way into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stopping at a couple of the Stations of the Cross (more on this later). The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is believed to be the place where Jesus was crucified. There were tons of people here, though Madeleine said it was the slowest she had seen it in a while! We were able to touch the stone believed to hold Jesus and the crucifix, as well as see the outside of the empty tomb of Jesus. It is a beautiful church made up of three sections. There are also several Christian denominations that have "ownership" over different areas of the church. The very interesting thing is that a very long time ago Sultan Saladin granted the key to a family of Muslims so that the different denominations would not fight over it. The Muslim family opens the church in the morning and locks it up at night; the neutral party monitoring the door keeps the Christians from fighting - pretty funny!

Our tour was wrapping up, but Madeleine took some time to walk through a bit of the Christian quarter with us, pointing out various shops along the way that were good for different types of souvenirs. At this point, it was very hot, we were extremely tired, and quite hungry as well! The three of us went to Madeleine's favorite hummus spot in the Old City called Lina Restaurant. It was delicious! We had hummus, tabouleh, falafel (though we all agreed the falafel earlier in the day was better) and pita. It definitely hit the spot! Then we went back to one of the shops where Madeleine's friend that sells rugs, scarves, and wooden boxes and other things from various Middle Eastern countries. He had made some tea and coffee for us while we chatted. He says that he dreams of the farmer's life and was very interested in our pictures of the cows, chickens, and hay making. It was nice to relax and talk about the differences in how we live, property costs, etc. The farms in Israel are mostly in the northern part of the country and land around Jerusalem is extremely expensive. The man that owned the shop had recently put some sort of poison on his rugs to make sure that moths didn't get into them, so after a while this was giving us a headache! We decided it was time to head out, but not without him making Kevin promise to email him more pictures of the farm!

After saying farewell to Madeleine we needed a little bit of a rest. We ducked inside a small chapel for some reflection and quiet time. A while later we met up with the Franciscan monks that do a full tour of the Stations of the Cross (Via Delarosa) on Fridays. The Stations of the Cross are 14 places that follow the story of Jesus' crucifixion. At each station there is a bible verse that is read that goes along with the story. They translate the various bible verses into 3 differently languages, I think they were Latin, English and Hebrew. At one of the churches on Mount of Olives there had been free books and one of them was that Stations of the Cross in English. We were able to follow not only the bible verses that the monks were saying, but the entire story and some additional background. So that was a bonus! There were about 100 other people along with about 15 Franciscan monks and many nuns from a wide variety of churches around the globe. While we walked they were also singing some hymns in Latin, which it seemed like many of the attendees knew. Trying to squeeze that many people down the same extremely narrow roads (more like wide sidewalks) of the Old City was quite a feat, never mind that we were exhausted and it was 80 degrees outside! But we made it through, it was interesting and we're glad we did it!

We made it back to our hotel, and it felt great to take our shoes off. We traced our tour and believe we walked at least 7 miles (up and down various hillsides, stairways, etc.) and that's without a lot of the meandering around that we did when we weren't going directly from place to place. We were tired! After a quick rest we made our way down to happy hour for snacks (which became dinner). We ate our leftover falafel sandwich from lunch (pita, hummus and falafel!), some veggies, water and juice, and about a million of these delicious cookies that we haven't quite figured out what they are yet. Tomorrow should be interesting as we will hit up a couple of the museums in Jerusalem and relax a bit.