Day 295 – Jerusalem, Israel – Thoughts & Stops Travel Diary

November 27^th, 2019

Today was a huge day of walking with lots of sites! I started off pretty early and made my first stop at the Western Wall. We had seen this from afar on our tour of the Old City but we never went up to it. This time, I went all the way to the wall and touched it. This is an extremely holy place and a pilgrimage site for Jewish people because of its connection to the Temple Mount.

After the wall, I went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was another site we saw on our tour but only from the outside. This time I went in and it was very interesting. I am glad that I went back to see the inside. It not only had the place where Jesus was crucified, but also the stone his body was cleaned on after his crucifixion. It also had his tomb that he ascended from.

There was a huge line to go down into the tomb area, so I skipped that part, but the church was still a very interesting place to be inside. After that I made my way to the Israel Museum which is absolutely huge. They have some of the Dead Sea Scrolls which are amazing.

Where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. You could not take pictures inside of the scrolls. This building is modeled to represent the cap on the canister like things the scrolls were found in.

They also have a huge model of what Jerusalem looked like in the second century which was interesting.

I walked through many galleries with art and artifacts. This was an extremely huge museum. One exhibit I found particularly interesting was called Veiled Women of the Holy Land. It described the total covering layers that some Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women dress in. It had interviews from three different women, and their thoughts behind the layers. The essence was that these particular women felt empowered by being completely covered. Something I still find hard to understand, but it was an interesting insight to many layers of clothing. After the museum I walked around the Old City on the way to Mount Olive for sunset. Even just walking around, you stumble on so much. I ended up going down to the birth place of Mary and then later the tomb of Mary.

The stairs leading down to the birth place of Mary.

Mount Olive had a great view of the city and it was a really nice spot for sunset.

Had to stop my walk and wait for these jokers to figure out how to get out of this. They thought they could drive past each other on this tiny, narrow street. Resulted in both cars getting major scratches.

On my way down, I stopped at the Garden of Gethsemane.

Stairs you go down to see the tomb of Mary. It was very close to her birth place.

Inside the place where the tomb of Mary is.

By the time I walked back to the hostel, I was totally exhausted and my feet very tired. It was a really great day. I chatted with some people at the hostel and made plans to go to Bethlehem tomorrow.