The City of Jerusalem

The Holy City

Jerusalem, wow I cant believe it, we took a full day tour, I wanted to go on an organised tour with a guide as there is so much to learn here and I didn’t want to miss anything.  We found a great place to stay called “A Little House in The Colony” it was $89 us a night and we were able to park the moto on the street safely.  It included a good breakfast and had a famous theatre with just one room for the movies that has a great coffee shop attached to it, reminds me of Mickies cafe on Salt Spring, the cool thing too is that you can take a beer into the movie with you. The area of our hotel was great also, a street full of restaurants, bookshops, wine stores etc. fun to explore.  Here in Israel Friday Saturday is like our Saturday Sunday so here they work on Sundays, it very different and hard for us to get used to.

Church of All Nations near Mount Olive, beautiful artwork.

The Church of Mary Magdalene, a beautiful place.

There is too much to say on the blog about the politics of Israel, and we cant begin to say we understand it but we have learnt an awful lot about it and its still at a stand still with Gaza being occupied by Palestinians along with the West Bank and Syria still wanting the Golen Heights.  The area of Gaza we stayed out of, but we did go thru part of the West Bank to get to Jerusalem and I can tell you its dirty with garbage everywhere, so different from the rest of Israel,  its such a shame.  The Israelis we met all want Peace of course, some are not so sure it wont end with more fighting though, I hope not.  Every Israeli has to spend time in the Army for 3 years from 18-21,  its nothing to see a group of teens walking the streets with huge rifles over their shoulders, somehow you just get used to it, i cant imagine seeing it at home though.

Israeli has 7.5million people, while nearly 4 million Palestinians live in the adjoining Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Gaza is one of the worlds most populated areas with 1.5million Palestinians living in a narrow strip of land only 6km wide and 45km long. Its hard to believe that this small piece of land can cause so much grief to such a forward thinking country.

Israeli people we met all seem very high energy, busy people, high achievers, driven, I think it perhaps has something to do with going into the Army at such a young age and the constant threat of war!   They do worry about a war but they say they have grown up with it and they are just used to it, used to the tanks and soldiers practising in the desert, yesterday we had to stop on the road as we watched tanks drive across the road on a bed of tires about 10 of them, very different indeed, but never have I felt unsafe or afraid here, its really a lovely place to visit.

We cant possibly begin to understand this small country, but as our new friend, Doron, said, "this is a country that is 114km wide, 424km long but 3000 years deep, lots of history and pain.