Jersusalem, Israel - Day 38

After having breakfast in our hotel room, we were ready to face another day of sightseeing. Moishe picked us up at 8:30am and we were off to see the Old City. We started with the City of David, the small hill where King David established the capital of his kingdom over 3,000 years ago located just south of the Temple Mount. It was incredible to be able to walk through the caves that brought Jerusalem its water while under siege. We saw the site where they discovered two bullae (clay impressions used for sealing documents) bearing the names of two Jewish scribes that are described in the Bible thereby showing that Jews have indeed been on this land since Biblical times.

We then moved to the Western Wall for a tour of the tunnel beneath it. If you ever visit Jerusalem, be sure to reserve this tour online as you cannot do it the day of your visit. Wow! The wall that you see from the outside is actually only the top portion. An equal amount of wall is below ground. It also stretches for a least three times as long as what you can see. We got to walk the tunnel that goes along the entire Western Wall. In fact, in the tunnel, there is an area where the wall is closer to the Holy of Holies than what you see outside. There were lots of women praying against this portion of the wall when we passed. It was very moving.








From the Western Wall, we walked up to the Old City to visit the narrow shopping streets. Jeff found another horse; we had a quick bite of lunch, saw some more archaeological items and then headed off to our vehicle passing through The Jaffa Gate.






We made a photo stop on the Promenade overlooking all of breathtaking Jerusalem.




If you look carefully at this photo you can see how close the mountains of Jordan (in the very top portion of the photo) are to Jerusalem. Moishe then drove us back to the port city of Ashdod where our ship was docked. We will most definitely be coming back to this country. There is so much to see that it will take multiple visits to get it all in.

Next stop, the Pyramids!