Old City & The Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Day 2 of my Israel tour yielded a few adventures. Today we toured Jerusalem and went into the Old City. It's a section of the city that is walled in completely full of merchants and The Church of the Holy Sepulcher-- where Jesus was crucified and his body was prepared for burial.

 

 

I'm not a religious person, but seeing this church was really impressive. Being in a place of religious pilgrimage was profound, even for me. I saw some really hard core Christians manically cleaning the stone slab Jesus was prepared for burial on, then pressing their faces on the stone. One man had a picture of Jesus laid out on the slab, which he gazed at while he laid on the stone for over a half an hour. I took a picture of him because it was so striking to me how dedicated he was.

 

We also saw the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall. This is another pilgrimage site for Jewish people. People come to the wall to pray, and to stuff written prayers on paper between the stones. The wall is partitioned off into two sections-- one side for men to pray, the other for women.

 

 

 

Old City has a huge market inside of it where we were allowed to go shop and haggle with the local merchants. I learned two important lessons while in the Old City: Israeli men like blond hair and tattoos and will lower their prices simply based on that and to never, ever, ever under any circumstances step all the way into a shop unless you want to be sexually assaulted.  I was touched way too much and had too many inquiries about my marital status.

 

So, James, Sammy the creepy merchant told me to tell you that you are a lucky man.

 

The shopping was interesting though. Old City is just alley after alley of little hole in the wall (almost literally) shops peddling all kinds of things from pig hearts to leather purses to olive wood crosses. I bought a few things and ate some absolutely delicious lamb shawarma.

 

Everything is pretty expensive in Israel. One American dollar is worth about three and a half shekles. So paying 10 shekles for a can of soda is crazy expensive, but that is the standard. Today I ate well, learned things, bought stuff and spent a lot of money. A typical vacation day.