Thursday 15 May 2003

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After our security briefing this morning with Sara, we had some "getting-to-know-you" activities with David and Shirel. This was a good morning (read easy) for our first full day. We had an outstanding lunch at a Turkish restaurant in Talpiot, a working class neighborhood near where we are staying. This location established a sense that this trip is different from the typical tourist or youth trip. Rather than eating someplace central or scenic, we were eating in a typical, everyday area.

In the afternoon, we had a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and of the Rabbinic Tunnels under the Kotel. The tour focused mainly on the history, both archaeological and recent, of these areas. After spending some time at the Kotel after the tour, we headed back to the hotel. Our group split up for dinner, but we all ended up in the area around Ben Yehuda St. Two things were particularly striking. One is that because of the strike, the trash had not been collected all week and there were piles of it around every trash can. The second is that while the street was fairly busy, most of the people there were Israeli instead of the mainly tourist area it had been before the current intifada started.

After dinner, Cobi, Michael, Robin, and I went to Mike's Place for a few beers. I gathered from them that this has always been a very popular place for American tourists. However, as with Ben Yehuda, except for the staff and us, everyone there was Israeli. There was a strange feeling of calm as we relaxed at the bar while watching the police roadblock directly in front of us. Since the road leads to East Jerusalem, they were stopping the cars and checking that there was nobody suspicious.

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