Warning: this is going to be a long post.
I arrived in Tel Aviv at 5:30 this morning and had an uneventful shuttle transfer from the airport to the Jaffa Gate of the Old City in Jerusalem shortly after sunrise. The scenery around here is lovely - rolling hills of vinyards dotted with green spaces and natural steppes of limestone rock. Every structure here is made of pale limestone which gives the city a calming quality. Especially at 7 am when you're one of the only souls wandering the narrow streets. I'm staying in a really sweet guesthouse that's a Lutheran Hospice. The best places to stay around here are apparently the ecclesiastical hospices for pilgrims who happily rent rooms to anyone regardless of religious affiliation. I picked St Marks because it was highly rated online, and the photos on their website made me swoon. Courtyard garden, roof deck with a panorama of the city, and recently remodeled rooms. All at a price that won't entirely break the budget.
Except that I couldn't check in until noon, so what to do besides hit the city and see what this place is all about. I brought no guidebook (didn't even look at one before I came), so I took a quick glance of the map in the hotel to get my bearings and set off. Old Jerusalem is divided into four quarters - the Jewish, Armenian, Christian, and Muslim. The guesthouse is more or less in the center of it all on the border of the Armenian and Christian Quarters. So I headed up through the Christian quarter, really only because I ended up following a group of kids make their way off to school, and realized I'd made one loop around and back to where I started. Back to George.
I'll start by saying that everyone here is extraordinarily friendly. I'm uber cautious, fully trust no one, and always have an escape route in mind. Also after 5 years in Boston and all my travels, it's hard to imagine anyone would want to just sit and chat without an ulterior motive. George was standing in for a friend as a tea and coffee vendor and had hit me up earlier in the morning, so I figured I'd stop off for a cup the second time around. He invited me to sit and visit, I figured I had nothing better to do with the morning, and thus started a charming conversation (through a smokers hack) with a sweet old guy who just likes people. He offered to meet me a few hours later for a personal guided tour, but while I like George and all, I couldn't see spending the rest of my day with him. So I bid a kind farewell and was off to explore further.
Not even knowing where I was going, another nice guy on the street quickly pointed me in the direction of the Western (Wailing) Wall. It was still quite wee in the morning, but the most devout of devout were out for the morning prayers. I went back by the wall in the evening, and it really is amazing to see all of the clearly different sects appear throughout the day from the various orthodoxies with tall hats and long locks of hair at the ears, or full beards with white stockings, shiny black robes, and big round fur hats that look like something from a car wash to rather western-looking young men wearing simple yarmulkes. People gather 24 hours a day to pray at and touch the wall - the men on the left and women in a separate and far smaller section on the right. A wide stripe along the lower margin of the wall is left from the hand prints of centuries of followers.
The outlook to the wall itself is an amazing vantage point for the religious aspects of the city, as from the wall - which is the most religious site in Judaism - one can see the Dome of the Rock at the Temple Mount (thought to be the ascension point of Mohammed as well as the site where Abraham was intended to sacrifice Isaac), as well as the Mount of Olives in the background. So from the wall, I wandered around to the outside of the Old City wall and up to where I could see enormous tour buses and throngs of visitors in the distance. The first site was the Garden of Gethesmane, where Jesus frequented with his disciples and went to pray the night before the crucifixion. The garden itself is still planted with centuries old olive trees, though I'm not sure if they're (probably not) the original olive trees. Though they look really old. From there I swam upstream to the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene and the Dominus Flevit (The Lord Wept) Church. That is apparently where Jesus wept for the future destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. Onward and upward (all of the tour groups smartly start at the top and work their way down), I met Abraham, the streetside hawker, who gleefully showed me a panoramic poster and gave me a quick overview of the city skyline - for free because I'm from the same country as his new friend (and trainee) from New Jersey - and sent me on my way up the hill further to the Church of the Ascension. Unfortunately that was closed, but a nice young man whose name I didn't catch eagerly pointed me back down the hill to the Grotto of Gethesmane (where Jesus was arrested) and the Tomb of the Virgin Mary.
So I feel like I've had a whirlwind tour of religious history and saw so much so far, though I missed the Church at the site where the Lord's Prayer was taught to the disciples, and I missed the site of the Last Supper. Ah well, there's so much to see, and I'm doing pretty well without a guidebook. It's easy enough to pop in and out of enormous group tours and listen to their guide for awhile before wandering on to the next site. And the people watching is unbelievable - big groups of Fransiscan monks and Russian Orthodox Catholics in full religious regalia toting digital cameras and posing for photos in front of various churches and relics.
Evening here is hauntingly beautiful, and after a quick afternoon siesta, I headed back out for a dusktime stroll through the city again. It is really fascinating to hear each of the religions coexisting, if not completely peacefully then at least with some degree of respect. From near the Western Wall, you can hear the rhythmic chants of the Jewish followers, the Muslim call to prayer echoing hauntingly through the valley, and the various church bells clanging from all directions. But not all at once as if the mosques and churches are each patiently waiting their turn and one picks up moments after the last left off. I'm sure it's all random chance of clocks not perfectly set, but I'd like to think there's more to it than that.
