View of the Tower of David and the Old City walls, from the Mamila promenade.
View of an apartment building/hotel from the Mamila promenade.
View of the Old City walls from the Mamila promenade.
Mamila promenade. Shops and restaurants.
View fro promenade; the Montifiori windmill.
Jaffa Gate (Sha'ar Yafo) to the Old City.
Arabic writing on the wall, no idea what.
Random alley...
Anyone for belly-dancing?
Guy with a thing on his head in the market.
Cloths and clothes, lots of 'em.
Even the preists have cameras.
Colors!
Rosary beads, crosses in the bowls.
Kitty playing with a chess piece.
Hanging stuffed camel dolls souvenirs.
Pomegranate juice stands.
More crosses...
Sign outside the... yup, Chruch of the Holy Sepulchre. Police signs in Hebrew and Arabic saying "Holy place, trade forbidden." And a security camera.
Curch of the Holy Sepulchre. It's really not impressive from outside, and there's some kind of construction on that left tower - it's been there for two years at least. You can't see the dome from here.
Arches at the church entrance.
The line inside the church, leading to the actual place where he was... lowered from the cross? I don't remember, there are so many marked places and, well, it's not like there are signs. But this line is about an hour, hour and a half long.
Ceiling dome.
Where the line ends.
Insode the church. It's huge - all halls and altars and caverns and caves, it's a maze.
Underground altar room at the church, carved inside the mountain.
Same one. Lots of incense. LOTS.
Another underground altar; I'm pretty sure this is where the cross stood, but not 100%.
And there is grafitti. WHO WRITES GRAFITTI IN THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE I ASK YOU. God, some people.
And carvings in the wall; this, I imagine, is the type of grafitti visitors left 100 years ago.
there's another level if you go up the stairs, wit a very shiny golden altar room; this is the ceiling mosaic.
And the altar, crowded with people.
And a small part of the ceiling mosaic.
Market again...
Some of the alleys are clean and beautiful. Some are kinda rundown and, as you can see, heaped with trash.
Via Doloroza. There are small stations on the way that signify the places Jesus fell while carrying his cross. Most of them are small one-room churches; this, the 8th station, is just a sign on the street.
Via Doloroza. All the shops and alleys I keep photographing are what you see while looking right and left from this street.
Coffee pots of various sizes, cups, lamps.
Aladdin?
Via Doloroza, still.
Two girls walking through an alley.
View from the roof of the Austrian Hospice.
View from the roof...
The Dome of the Rock in the background, and the dome of one of the churches up front. You can see how the church is built in the shape of a cross. the big silver dome in the background is the Al Aqsa mosque.
The Dome of the Rock.
VIEW FROM ROOF
Old city roofs... (Also, two flags and a guy. Security, perhaps?)
View from roof
and once again, view from the roof (you can tell I'm CPing these)
So when the muezzin starts singing prayers through the loudspeakers on that mosque tower? That's LOUD.
Inside the Austrian Hospice.
Another dirty alley.
A group of soldiers on a Sunday morning field trip.
The Kotel - West Wall, Wailing Wall, Holiest Place To Jews Ever, etc.
The Kotel is divided into a women's section and a men's section. Guess which is bigger.
(Usually the men's section is fuller than this, but that day it was empty, and the women's section was - as usual - crowded.)
A bride, come for photos.
Fluffy.
Hey, I wasn't the only one taking photos.
Elementary school kids on a field trip to the Kotel.
Tis high, the wall! Also, you can see how the stones are different the further up you go. The older stones at the bottom are huge.
The women's section.
A woman praying.
My friend putting a note in the cracks. Evey single crack as high and low as you can reach is packed with wish notes. At the entrence to the women's section she was given a shawl to cover up her shoulders and neckline. I was modest enough that day :-)
Women praying against the wall.
Reenacting.
A haredi Jew praying in the men's section.
A soldier (A paratrooper CO, in fact. Red boots.)
From further back. Again, note the men/women division.
The Jewish Quarter. Cars can't pass here; it's all a mase of winding streets and stairs and bridges and arches, kind of like a white-stoned outdoor Hogwarts.
A "side" street in the Jewish Quarter. "Side" because they're all side streets, really.
Kabbalah bracelets. They're supposed to be good luck charms, cost maybe a shekel. They are basically a red string tied around your wrist.
Being a Torah scribe is a profession. Torah scrolls aren't just printed.
A souvenir store in the Jewish Quarter. The horns hanging in the front are shofars.
Afternoon sunlight playing on a coffee house wall
The Cardo: Jerusalem's main street in Roman times (hence the name - heart of the city). The ground level then was way lower than it is today; today's ground level is where that arch on the top right is.
The underground section of the Cardo. The golden menora is a copy of the one that stood in the Temple, and is supposed to be placed in the Third Temple (Whe ItIs Built). Um, right.
The modern continuaton of the Cardo - an underground one-street shopping center. Lots of small art galleries, jewelry, and spiffily designed judaica. Pretty and expensive.
And fan t-shirts for the tourists :-)
Shop front in the Cardo.
Art for sale in the cardo.
And more artwork.
The cardo eventually becomes Christian Street in the Christan Quarter, which is basically one big market. Boxes!
And Armenian pottery! (How much do I love the phrase "Shalom, y'all"? LOTS. Although more so when I see it in an Atlantean synagogue than here.)
Hamsas. (Good luck charms)
Chessboards...
Nargilas (or, as I learned through Birthright folks, hookahs.)
Spices
and incense
And lots of old stuff. Trays, furniture, the works. Lots of people like these; not my style at all. Some of these, I'm sure, are remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
Scarves
Most of the market streets have these tracks on all the steps, for wheeling carts.
Beads
Earrings
(I saw these girls striding proudly through the street, and it was totally Sex and the City, the haredi version.)
Hot bagels! You can always find these in the Old City and, curiously, at theater exits in Tel Aviv. These aren't New York bagels, but 'beyga'le', as they're called - long oblong bread rolls with a hole in the middle, covered in seseme.
Tower of Daviv again, from the outside.
Outside the walls in Jerusalem = TRAFFIC.
And a pretty pretty sunset, the end.
