Blogs from Jerusalem, Jerusalem District, Israel, Middle East - page 9

today we are starting to get tired we left at 815 and went to the garden tomb there is conjecture as to whether this is the burial place of Jesus is or the church of the holy seplechre or most likely neither place but I still enjoyed going to this site more than the church because it looks more like I would have imagined from the bible record it is in a garden and it is a tomb which would have had a stone rolled in front so you can easily imagine here the scene when the women came in the morning to prepare the body and found the stone already rolled away. we went out of the garden tomb and across the road to the quarry of solomon this was Amazing huge underground quary under ... read more

this morning we went to the mount of olives and stayed to talk about how Jesus came here and wept, how he went from here many times into jerusalem through the beutiful gate or the lion gate which we can see from here the temple would have stood where the dome of the rock is today but twice the height dominating the view we talked about the graves here because the jews believe when the messiah comes those buried here will be the first to be raised because he comes to the mount of olives Zach 14 we talked about how this mountain will be split in 2 and a plain would be formed but mt zion would be raised up so many things happened here we then went down the hill to the garden of ... read more

today was the best day so far some of our group Ruth George Jordan and Abraham went up the snake path at 4am and saw the sunset george will have photos the rest of us went up by cable car at 8am Massada is amazing when you come face to face with it you wonder at the tenacity and persistence of the Romans faced with a seemingly impossible task of laying siege to a mountain and you can understand the confidence of the Jews on top of this mountain photos do not do it justice and the tons of dirt shifted by Jewish slave labour for 9 months is amazing then there is the sheer opulence of the buildings including 5 palaces built by Herod just for show (he apparently only used it once ) there ... read more

I arrived in Jerusalem Sunday, 31 May after flying from Athens to Tel Aviv. Travelling from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is quite convenient - the Nesher shared taxi service takes up to 10 passengers to various destinations en route to Jerusalem. I got off near Damascus Gate باب العامود and took a taxi to my hotel on Mount of Olives جبل الزيتون. Both Monday and Tuesday were spent walking about the area in and around Jerusalem's Old City المدينة القديمة. The historical richness of the city is without measure - it is the Holy City المدينة المقدسة to Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. The Old City is surrounded by medieval walls and is accessible through any one of the multiple gates, one of the most well-known being Damascus Gate so named because travellers to and from ... read more

We arrived at our hostel at 6am after a pretty gruelling back to back red eye flights and a 10 hour layover in Amsterdam. We got here just in time for the free breakfast. We filled our bellies and hit the sack for a couple hours. Waking up at noon we took off into the city. This is our first trip into the Middle East which has been a dream of ours for some time so needless to say we're pretty excited about the whole deal. The first stop was lunch at a local cafe. This was to be our first hummus in Israel and it did not disappoint. Pita and hummus is absolutely legendary here. The olives need no introduction. Fuelled up once more we walked down Jaffa Street towards the Old City. Jaffa Street ... read more