Day 7 - ‘Free’ day - walking the walls of Jerusalem, Hezekiah’s tunnel, getting lost

Another retrospective writeup, though as I try to relive the memories it may become written as if in the present.

There were several options possible for the day, including visiting the Israel museum, the holocaust museum, walking the city walls, visiting the city of David ruins, Hezekiah’s tunnel to the Gihon spring or just generally walking round the city. Chris had wanted to do the tunnel, and the wall walk also seemed a sensible plan, so finding ourselves ready to go a little sooner than the suggested start time, we go a taxi from the hotel to the Damascus gate, then bought tickets for the wall.

I’m wondering a little what to write about the actual walk. It’s just what you might expect: you’re high up on a wide stone wall, looking down on roofs and into people’s back gardens. There are areas of steep stone steps and metal railings, the occasional fortification used by the Jordanian army during the first war in 1948. In places there is barbed and razor wire to discourage uninvited guests, and the roofscape consists of water tanks and heaters, plus in many cases a certain amount of rubbish plus the occasional cross or Islamic cresent. Sometimes the view is good, peering down into street scenes or catching interesting individuals passing beneath, while sometimes it’s just squalid.

The wall walk is in 2 halves, norther and southern, and we tackle the northern first, from the Damascus gate to the Lion gate before lunch, then making our way across Jerusalem, picking up the southern route afterward.

We started out with Nick, who we’ve known vaguely for a long time. He wanted a chance to take pictures properly too, and he came equipped with 2 Fuji XT-2 bodies plus standard, wide and super zoom lenses and a bunch of other kit. It becomes obvious fairly quickly that we need to separate so that he can take his time. About half way round we are caught up by some other members of the group who started off after we had, taking the tram into Jerusalem from near the hotel (more on this later).

Eventually we complete the walk and head off for lunch to Israel’s answer to Starbucks - Aroma - which we were told was so successful that it put starbucks out of business there. Lunch is a sandwich and a bottle of drink for the equivalent of £10/CAD15 each.

After lunch we go our own way, heading up to the south section.

Sunday afternoon seems to be a day for schools to go out on field trips. The school children here are some of the most obnoxious I have met anywhere, elbowing and barging passers-by, walking at and blocking tourists, generally behaving with a sense of entitlement I’ve never experienced in children before - God help Israel if this generation don't change before adulthood. We run the gauntlet of the school parties to access the steps up - the day is hot again, and there’s no shade on this part of the wall.

This section has generally less exciting stuff to see, although the views over the Kidron valley are OK. Once we reach the end point we make our way back to the area around the old city of David and buy tickets for Hezekiah’s tunnel.

The tunnel itself is cut through solid rock for around 533 meters, is wide enough for a man that isn’t fat and in places so low as to require me to duck uncomfortably, a lack of lighting requiring that walkers take a torch as they wade through the water that varies between ankle and mid-thigh deep - all fine then. ;-) 

Unfortunately we get stuck between a group of teenage schoolgirls, screaming and throwing water over each other, and a group of students in their late teens & early 20s who shout & sing. The girls frequently stop, which makes for discomfort when standing in a tunnel that feels about 4 feet high, and by the time we reach the zigzag section that marks roughly half way, we are ready to stop.

Eventually daylight is seen in the distance, and we emerge at a pool of siloam (possibly not THE pool of siloam).

There are 2 options for travelling back at this point - either past the pool and up on the road, or via a tunnel that runs back up the hill to the CoD - though the signage doesn’t express it like that. By happy chance we decide to take the tunnel - probably part of the Roman-era sewer system that ran below a wide stairway & ramp that went from the temple area to the pool at the bottom - and get a much better sense of how the 2 might have been connected 2000 years ago over the roughly 600-800 meter distance. After this we walk past some of the CoD ruins, out into the current city & carefully read the map to negotiate our way to the Damascus gate again.

At this point we then make a mistake - trying to use the tram system to get back.

We caught the tram in the right direction after getting advice from the local tourist information centre, alighting at Ammunition hill.

Where is Ammunition hill????

A quick search on the maps on my phone suggested that the Ambassador hotel was just a few hundred yards away, but the location suggested turned out to be the main police depot for the area. A passerby can’t help us either, and in the end we try to use a combination of phone and tourist maps to navigate us to something we might recognise.

Now before the obvious mockery, we are usually pretty good at this kind of thing, finding our way to all sorts of places in foreign lands.

Not this time.

 

We walk for an hour before discovering that we are on the Jericho road, about level with Jerusalem, but to the east side. Along the route we pass many landmarks that we've seen from the coach, but none of them allow us to place our location. After our experience a few nights before I pray for a merciful taxi & and lo and behold a man walks out of a café and gets into the driving seat of a taxi right beside me, but when I ask for the Ambassador hotel he holds up his hands and shakes his head.

So we do it the way we’ve had to so much now - we figure it out ourselves.

 

Having finally found where we are on the map - where we REALLY are now - we navigate gradually back to the Nablus road that we should have been on. A hotel receptionist on the way is able to direct us (incorrectly as it turned out) to the Ambassador, and after around another 20min we finally get back, sweaty, sore of foot and exhausted.

The relief is huge.

Day 6 - the Easter bit.

The itinerary describes this as the easter journey – a day, mainly on foot, in the steps of Jesus.

I’m writing this and the next day retrospectively, and right now I remember odd details from the time, but Bethphage is missing from my consciousness – I’ll go look up the pictures in a moment. Most memorable part initially was the incredible slipperiness of the path down from the Mount of Olives to the Kidron valley, but there’s quite a bit swimming around in the back of my head too.

So we went into a pleasant enough church at Bethphage (apparently the name means house of figs) with a viewpoint that looks out over the wall that Israel built to separate the Palestinians and prevents someone from walking directly from Jerusalem to Bethphage now. There’s other views as well, that are typical of the area, with concrete houses plus towers sticking up above for religious reasons. The wall looks tall, ugly in a harsh landscape, and from stories we’ve heard has only worked to deepen resentments and division.

The coach took us back to Olivet again, in time for a group photo ($10 each - the togger knows his stuff and the shot is good, with Jerusalem as a backdrop). From there we walked north along the ridge on the top of the mount & down that slippery slope I mentioned to the top of the Kidron valley, passing the Jewish cemetery, pausing to look at 1^st century ossiaries.

Passing by Dominus Flevit, a chapel that is supposed to be shaped like a teardrop (perhaps if you squint a bit?) we arrive at the chapel of All Nations where a service is going on. We pass below an orthodox basilica with shining golden onion domes modelled on one in Moscow. Then cross the road and descend the Kidron/cedron/chadron valley, passing Absalom’s tomb on our left, then stopping just before the tomb of the sons of Hezir under a shady overhang beneath the cemetery. Here we get a bit more ‘easter story’ that makes it all seem much less, rather than more real.

I spot a largish lizard, all spiky bits & claws, clinging to the rocky wall next to a formation that looks very anatomical. The valley bottom here has attractive pink flowers that Chris could probably identify and one of our group has a butterfly land on his hand.

After that we moved across to the other side of the valley, where the path went downwards behind and below Palestinian housing. Here rubbish has accumulated, apparently from being thrown from windows over many years in heaps and piles, with plastic materials failing to break down and disappear. The houses above seem to have been built on older dwellings in time-honoured fashion, and it seems amazing that with the height, they don’t all come crashing down into the valley. Some of the housing looks good, but quite a lot does not. There are video cameras on lamp posts at strategic points.

We have gone down below the ‘city of David’ as ancient Jerusalem is now called, and turn uphill to find the newly discovered pool of Siloam (apparently it isn’t *that* pool of Siloam, but never mind) which is closed for the day but the gate isn’t shut. We don’t go in, but do photograph from the open doorway.

From there it’s a long, hot climb back up into the city to walk along bits of the via Dolorosa.

Somewhere in there we ate lunch, but I have no memory remaining of that. We may have also caught the coach at some stage.

We pick up at a possible site for the house of Caiaphus including a pit where Jesus may have been held awaiting trial. From there we head into the city through the Lion gate, passing piles of rubbish (the guide says it’s not normally like that, blaming Ramadan, but those who’ve been before say it’s always like that).

We arrive at St. Anne’s church (St. Anne was by tradition Mary’s mother, and by some traditions that was also a virgin birth). Built by the crusaders, this building has an 11 second reverb time - virtually useless for speaking, and requiring songs to be sung very slowly. Which of course we do. How Great Thou Art sounds pretty good - I made a video of one verse with the phone. The group that follow us in have someone sing the same song as a solo, and she does it very well indeed.

We seem to have visited some more ruins outside the church that show how much lower ground level was once, and also a cistern that’s still full of water.

From there it’s into the city on the Via D, next visting an underground room/chapel that’s full of nuns when we arrive - this may be the judgement hall ‘Gabatha’ - and we do the singing/reading thing again. There are ancient pavements etc here too that would apparently have been in the outside air at one time, shown by grooves cut in the stones to offer grip for horses.

Back to the Via D, we pass a shop sign naming prop. Jelly Ibrahim, which Chris finds funny. There were vendors selling tee shirts with anti-UN slogans, as well as signs telling us that our guides would lie, cheat and brain wash us about prices, and if we wanted the best bargains then we should come in alone.

We turn down some side streets to arrive at the house of Raja, our coach driver. He had invited us to visit him at home, and we meet his mum and aunt there. Raja is a Coptic Christian, the copts having suffered badly in Egypt at the hands of Isis, and we are made warmly welcome. Before we leave we are able to pray blessing on the family there and for Raja’s up-coming wedding.

Back on Via D to visit the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre, and we pass through an Ethiopian Christian area before getting to the COTHS.

The interior of the building is mixed and a little muddly, architecture appearing to have been progressive rather than intentional. The interior is slightly misty with incense smoke, there are people everywhere doing religious things like kneeling, kissing artifacts, plus more general tourists just peering at stuff and taking pictures.

We take pictures and peer at stuff.

The ceiling is spectacular, there are huge marble pillars, painted walls and religious art everywhere. Incongruously, there is a tatty old aluminium step ladder in the hall containing the stone on which Jesus was supposed to have had his body prepared for burial. My understanding is that this ladder is a source of disagreement between the various church traditions responsible for the building, and no-one can move it because to do so would alter the balance of power between the groups.

After we escape the melee to the courtyard outside, a ‘parade’ of chaps in clerical gear, led by a man in a dark suit & red fez, thumping a wooden staff on the ground at each step, proceed past. A beggar with a pram full of stuff, hump on his back, walks through the now crowded courtyard, up a ramp and disappears. We head back through the narrow streets to the coach for a shower and dinner at the hotel.