Israel Day 7: Free Day!

Sunday was our first free day in Israel. A few of us had decided pretty early in the week that we wanted to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for church that morning. For those who are wondering, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is located over what tradition holds are the locations of Jesus' crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. I'll admit that I'm pretty convinced that Jesus was actually buried there. As for the crucifixion? I'm less sold on the idea as are a lot of other people. But that's all another topic for another day. Anywho, Dr. Richter decided she wanted to go since she had never been there for a service, so she organized a reasonably good sized group to go. We started off going to the Greek Orthodox service for a little bit, and then some of us started wandering around to see some of the other services taking place.

Greek Orthodox Service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

I stayed at the Greek Orthodox service for about 30 minutes before I had gotten tired of standing in one spot for so long. That particular service typically last about 3 hours. I had trouble focusing because this little old lady kept yelling at our group if we stood in front of her, sat too close to her, or made people move if any of her friends came so that they could sit closer to her. This was rather entertaining at first, but got old quickly. It made the whole service feel pretty unwelcoming. That's the primary reason I decided to wander.
After being there a little over an hour, a friend and I wondered around the Christian Quarter of the Old City. I got this wonderful pastry/bread thing that was fairly eggy and had little bits of chocolate in it. I'll get pictures of it at some point because it was awesome! Plus, you can find them everywhere in the Old City.

A group of us met at 10 to do the rampart walk around the Old City. This is where you walk the ramparts of the wall from the Jaffa Gate all the way to where it runs into the Temple Mount. You can pick it up again near the Dung Gate, but we weren't motivated to continue further. It was interesting to see the city from such a different perspective.

Me surveying West Jerusalem from a watch tower located on the ramparts of the Old City. This tower was built sometime during 1536-1541

Roughly 33,000 people live in the Old City, but you wouldn't really know it just walking around on the street level because you don't see many residences. You mainly see shops and other places of business. From the ramparts, however, you could see the back side of the buildings and see where people live. It was especially interesting to watch the transition between the Christian Quarter and the Muslim Quarter. The reason for this is that about 10,000 combined live in the Christian, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters. The remaining 23,000 people all live in the Muslim Quarter. That means that it is much more densely packed with people. You could really see this from the ramparts. From a perspective above the city, it was wall to wall buildings with a huge number of satellite dishes. It was unbelievable.

A view of the Dome of the Rock as seen from the ramparts on the north side of the Old City. Notice how densely packed the houses and apartments are.

After exiting the rampart just to the north of the Temple Mount, we made our way through the Muslim Quarter by way of the Via Dolorosa to just before the Damascus Gate. The reason was that we heard you could get some of the best falafel in the city there. The rumors we had heard proved to be right. The falafel was delicious and to top it off they had RC Cola! A falafel or shawarma and an RC Cola was a mere 12 shekels (about $3.50). We took our food and went through the Damascus Gate to just outside the Old City and sat on a low wall under a tree and had our lunch. The setting was beautiful and the food was falafeley good!

Me with my RC Cola and falafel. Notice the excitement on my face...

After lunch, we mosied back into the Old City and made our way to the Jaffa Gate. Along the way, we did a little bit of shopping. We stopped at a shop in the Christian Quarter owned by a man named Shaban. We were introduced to him and his shops on our first tour of the Old City because he has very fair prices and gives us an excellent exchange rate at his money changing shop. When he saw our group walk up, he excused himself from the couple he was bargaining with. The reason he did this was that he wanted to give us something cool to drink. He got us a bottle of orange juice and some cups and then apologized that he couldn't pour it for us since he needed to get back to the couple he had been bargaining with. We were all stunned at the hospitality shown to us. Besides being hospitable, he was also being smart. We all commented that if he had anything we were interested in buying, we would purchase it from him instead of someone else. And I plan to continue only changing my money there.

The rest of the day was significantly less exciting because I had to study for my test on Monday morning. All in all, it was one of the most restful and exciting Sundays I've ever had. I can't believe that I've only been here for a week and still have two weeks to go!

As a quick side note, my professors, Dr. Richter and Dr. Stone, have been posting pictures and commentary of the trip on Facebook. You don't have to join Facebook to see them, so I encourage everyone to check them out here.