March 19, 2019
Day 14: Our last full day in Israel! Today was a day full of 'lasts'. Our last day to shop at the shuk. Last walk up Jaffa St. Last cheese bureka. Tomorrow will be full of even more lasts as we close out this trip. But I'll post a sappy epilogue tomorrow night when I set forth on our plane ride home and have 19 hours to kill.
There were still a few items that I wanted to buy at the shuk so we decided to start our day in the Old City. I picked up a really cool book from a bookstore called 'Elia's Photo Shop'. This book contains photographs of Israel taken by the shop owner's grandfather and includes photos from 1930s - 1960s. What a find!
Afterwards, we walked across the Armenian Quarter to Mt Zion to a place that we found when we first arrived in Jerusalem but were unable to go to until today: The Holocaust Cellar. This was established in 1949 and was the first Holocaust Museum. However, it did not start out as a museum at all. On the walls are tombstones - not for people but a plaque for each town or village destroyed by the nazis. Originally, this dark, cave like building was used for survivors or families of victims as a place to memorialize their loved ones when they had no other place since their town was virtually obliterated. Eventually people began donating items and now there are displays that are horrible to see, yet very moving. Tomorrow we are planning to go to Yad Vashem so this was only the beginning of what we're prepared to see then.
We then spent a little more time in the shuk (my mom said that if she never sees it again it'll be too soon! She's all shuk-ed out), got some snacks and lunch, then made our way to the Jaffa Gate to meet our tour group for our Mount of Olives tour.
We were grateful for the bus drive up to the top, but most of what the tour guide said was old news to us. She took us to a lot of churches that were built on supposedly holy sites, but I barely even bothered to enter them because I'm really not interested in the history of the churches - I'm far more interested in the sites themselves.
They dumped us off at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, down inside the Kidron Valley, deep within Muslim territory who contained people who were not extremely friendly toward foreigners. We had the option to take a taxi home but we decided to just walk back ourselves. The sun was going down as we went through the Lion's Gate, in the Muslim Quarter. I still don't know what happened there, but we managed to walk into a bit of a tense situation. Road blocks were set up and Israeli police were everywhere. It was the first and only time that I felt like we might be in actual danger and I rushed my mom and Joanie through there as quickly as possible.
We finished our night eating our Final burekas in the lounge and started packing our bags.
Day 14: Our last full day in Israel! Today was a day full of 'lasts'. Our last day to shop at the shuk. Last walk up Jaffa St. Last cheese bureka. Tomorrow will be full of even more lasts as we close out this trip. But I'll post a sappy epilogue tomorrow night when I set forth on our plane ride home and have 19 hours to kill.
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| Bureka |
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| Fresians!! |
Afterwards, we walked across the Armenian Quarter to Mt Zion to a place that we found when we first arrived in Jerusalem but were unable to go to until today: The Holocaust Cellar. This was established in 1949 and was the first Holocaust Museum. However, it did not start out as a museum at all. On the walls are tombstones - not for people but a plaque for each town or village destroyed by the nazis. Originally, this dark, cave like building was used for survivors or families of victims as a place to memorialize their loved ones when they had no other place since their town was virtually obliterated. Eventually people began donating items and now there are displays that are horrible to see, yet very moving. Tomorrow we are planning to go to Yad Vashem so this was only the beginning of what we're prepared to see then.
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| Only a tiny portion of the walls that contained the plaques. |
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| Actual clothing from Auschwitz |
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| The worst photo album I've ever seen |
We then spent a little more time in the shuk (my mom said that if she never sees it again it'll be too soon! She's all shuk-ed out), got some snacks and lunch, then made our way to the Jaffa Gate to meet our tour group for our Mount of Olives tour.
We were grateful for the bus drive up to the top, but most of what the tour guide said was old news to us. She took us to a lot of churches that were built on supposedly holy sites, but I barely even bothered to enter them because I'm really not interested in the history of the churches - I'm far more interested in the sites themselves.
 |
| A building that can't decide if it's a church or a mosque |
 |
| Kidron Valley |
 |
| Tombs on the Mount of Olives |
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| Garden of Gasthemane |
They dumped us off at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, down inside the Kidron Valley, deep within Muslim territory who contained people who were not extremely friendly toward foreigners. We had the option to take a taxi home but we decided to just walk back ourselves. The sun was going down as we went through the Lion's Gate, in the Muslim Quarter. I still don't know what happened there, but we managed to walk into a bit of a tense situation. Road blocks were set up and Israeli police were everywhere. It was the first and only time that I felt like we might be in actual danger and I rushed my mom and Joanie through there as quickly as possible.
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| Lions Gate |
We finished our night eating our Final burekas in the lounge and started packing our bags.
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