At 8.30am it was already 31 degrees Celcius, and so to get to the old town we got in a cab at 8.47am on King George Street. We arrived at the Jaffa Gate at 8.54am and the fare was 20ILS, which was normal for a change. We then went to the information office and made a complaint in writing about Jerusalem taxi drivers. This took about 10 minutes and then we headed into the maze of streets.
We got to the Western Wall entrance a bit early and so at 9.25am we sat down in the Al Buraq Restaurant and ordered some coffee. I had seen 22 armed police on the way to this point. Once we had sat down we also bought biscuits. We waited for the coffee to be prepared and at 9.30am the store manager said, “One minute please,” and went outside and met a man carrying two 2-litre bottles of milk. He took one of them in his hand and then made our cappuccinos. The biscuits were coated with sesame seeds and were very good. The tab came to 30ILS which was a bit steep.
Then we headed through the security gate and at 9.56 I got the mobile roaming switch to Palestine again. We went into the foyer of the building and sat down to wait. When a group of about 10 people moved to the other end of the space I went up to a staffer and asked him if it was time for us to move also and he said, “You have to wait about 20 minutes.” At 10.05am a man got up to meet a young woman coming out of the tunnel entrance and he had a pistol tucked into his belt. He wore a yarmulke and wasn’t with the military or the police as far as I could tell.
At 10.20am we went through the doors into a room and were greeted by a man named Eliazar Finer. He told us things about the Temple Mount using a diorama and some slides on a screen, some of which were animated. The material he was using for his talk was animated by religious orthodoxy and it was hard to know what was true and what had been fabricated in order to buttress ideas that are commonly held by Jews. At 10.34am we left the room and walked along a corridor further into the complex. We kept going deeper and deeper into the earth beneath the Muslim Quarter of the old town, through tunnels which seemed to get narrower and narrower as we went along.
By 11.18am it had become quite oppressive to be in the tunnels. Around this time we passed by the man who had greeted us a few days earlier, whose name was Shlomo. He didn’t seem to recognise me this time around but I said “hello” anyway. By the time we got to the end of the tour it was quite enough time to spend underground and I was very relieved to get back to the foyer at 11.32am. By midday we had returned to the Jaffa Gate and then we stopped to have some lunch at a cafe on Mamilla Avenue. We had a tuna sandwich and an omelette sandwich, and a cappuccino and a hot chocolate. The tab came to 89ILS. After eating we left the cafe at 12.25pm and headed back to the hotel. The same black-garbed busker I had photographed a few days earlier was playing his guitar on the mall and this time singing ‘No Woman No Cry’ by Bob Marley.
It was 38 degrees Celcius by this time and when we got to the hotel we realised that the Israel Museum, where we had planned to go in the afternoon, would close at 2pm, so we quickly headed back up the street and got in a cab. The guy set the meter and we only paid 25ILS for the fare. When we arrived we headed to the European paintings section and had a look around for about 40 minutes until the place closed, then we dropped into the shop and bought some postcards. We then returned to the front of the complex and got in a cab.
The driver wanted 50ILS initially but eventually agreed to take us back to town for 40ILS. It was a close thing as to whether he would take us or not. He was Palestinian and had a very short fuse. At one point he made the two-movement hand-wiping gesture that signals “finish” but we stayed in his car and he got us back to our destination. He fingered a string of gold-coloured worry beads while he was driving, he had a very creased face, and he was listening to Arabic talkback on the radio. We relented with the fare because it was very hot and we didn’t want to be stranded in the open at that time of day. We got back to the hotel at around 2.15pm. At 3.15pm it was still 36 degrees Celcius.
Outside my window at 4pm some stores were open and others were shut. Friday is the holy day for Muslims. I had noticed that despite the number of cheap take-away joints in the downtown area there are not very many sit-down restaurants there. People don’t seem to eat out a lot unless it is to have a shawarma, a pizza, a bagel, or a hamburger. The types of restaurants that you find all over the CBD in Sydney are just not available here in any great numbers.
Women here often wear snoods or tichels (scarves) on their heads indicating that they are devout and married, so perhaps they do all of the cooking that is needed, in their homes. It is weird though, considering the large numbers of tourists who come to Jerusalem each year, that the main destination for people who want to eat out is the high-class area around the YMCA where we had been based during the first three days of our stay. The downtown area is a bit of a wasteland at night so tourists probably gravitate to the tony area which is Mamilla Avenue, with its clothing stores and other boutiques. To get a decent meal for two for less than A$100 in the downtown area is difficult as there are only three or four such restaurants in the whole precinct.
But it was a relief coming to Israel for two main reasons. One is the ability to use a credit card to make purchases and to take cash out of an ATM. I had made arrangements before leaving Sydney to cover the expenses of the trip but Amman and Petra had not been cheap, so I wanted to save the US dollars I had brought.
The other thing that is radically different from Amman, despite the greedy Israeli taxi drivers, is the general sense of order that prevails in Jerusalem. Every three or four minutes after dark you see a police car driving down Jaffa Street with its lights flashing (cop cars always drive around here with activated beacons) but at least the pedestrian crossings have traffic lights and you can walk to the other side of major thoroughfares without risking life and limb. This sets the city apart from Amman. On the other hand the food in Amman is amazing, if you buy the local dishes.
What links Jordan and Israel? The languages when spoken sound remarkably similar to the untrained ear, for a start. Some of the sounds that are used preponderantly are the same. Both Arabic and Hebrew writing goes from right to left, moreover. And devout people in both countries seem to cleave to similar values that are based on the family and on monogamy. In both countries, furthermore, you don’t see many dogs. There are also dietary similarities linking the two cultures and the types of music that people enjoy in both places have strong similarities.
Beggars seem to be better off in Israel. I saw some sad sights in Amman. One young woman with no legs was stationed on a street in the downtown area when we passed on the pavement. She was doing something to her hair but it was clear why she had been put there. Another woman with a complete face covering was begging with two disabled children who had been placed on a blanket on the pavement in the downtown area. It was terribly sad and you just don’t see such cases in Jerusalem although you do see beggars. You also come across young people trying to fund charitable causes around Jaffa Street and they use English to approach foreigners if they think they can make some money out of them.
At 5.25pm we went out to find some food but most of the shops and restaurants were shut because it was the Sabbath the next day and Jews start to pray the night before. We asked some elegantly-dressed orthodox who were walking down the middle of Jaffa Street, on our way back from dinner, where they were going.
After leaving the hotel though we didn’t find anything that caught our fancy in the downtown area so we headed along Mamilla Avenue again and entered the old town. We went into the Armenian Tavern at 6.05pm and ordered an Ararat steak, a green salad, a Goldstar beer and a glass of mango juice. The food was ordinary but it did the job and we paid (174ILS) and left, then dropped into a supermarket (actually more like a well-stocked convenience store) and bought some beers and some fruit juice (54ILS). We got back to the hotel at 7.30pm.
Above: The Armenian Tavern is a strange mix of old and new. The waiters have tattoos and they play soft jazz on the stereo. The decor is antique however.
We got to the Western Wall entrance a bit early and so at 9.25am we sat down in the Al Buraq Restaurant and ordered some coffee. I had seen 22 armed police on the way to this point. Once we had sat down we also bought biscuits. We waited for the coffee to be prepared and at 9.30am the store manager said, “One minute please,” and went outside and met a man carrying two 2-litre bottles of milk. He took one of them in his hand and then made our cappuccinos. The biscuits were coated with sesame seeds and were very good. The tab came to 30ILS which was a bit steep.
Then we headed through the security gate and at 9.56 I got the mobile roaming switch to Palestine again. We went into the foyer of the building and sat down to wait. When a group of about 10 people moved to the other end of the space I went up to a staffer and asked him if it was time for us to move also and he said, “You have to wait about 20 minutes.” At 10.05am a man got up to meet a young woman coming out of the tunnel entrance and he had a pistol tucked into his belt. He wore a yarmulke and wasn’t with the military or the police as far as I could tell.
At 10.20am we went through the doors into a room and were greeted by a man named Eliazar Finer. He told us things about the Temple Mount using a diorama and some slides on a screen, some of which were animated. The material he was using for his talk was animated by religious orthodoxy and it was hard to know what was true and what had been fabricated in order to buttress ideas that are commonly held by Jews. At 10.34am we left the room and walked along a corridor further into the complex. We kept going deeper and deeper into the earth beneath the Muslim Quarter of the old town, through tunnels which seemed to get narrower and narrower as we went along.
By 11.18am it had become quite oppressive to be in the tunnels. Around this time we passed by the man who had greeted us a few days earlier, whose name was Shlomo. He didn’t seem to recognise me this time around but I said “hello” anyway. By the time we got to the end of the tour it was quite enough time to spend underground and I was very relieved to get back to the foyer at 11.32am. By midday we had returned to the Jaffa Gate and then we stopped to have some lunch at a cafe on Mamilla Avenue. We had a tuna sandwich and an omelette sandwich, and a cappuccino and a hot chocolate. The tab came to 89ILS. After eating we left the cafe at 12.25pm and headed back to the hotel. The same black-garbed busker I had photographed a few days earlier was playing his guitar on the mall and this time singing ‘No Woman No Cry’ by Bob Marley.
It was 38 degrees Celcius by this time and when we got to the hotel we realised that the Israel Museum, where we had planned to go in the afternoon, would close at 2pm, so we quickly headed back up the street and got in a cab. The guy set the meter and we only paid 25ILS for the fare. When we arrived we headed to the European paintings section and had a look around for about 40 minutes until the place closed, then we dropped into the shop and bought some postcards. We then returned to the front of the complex and got in a cab.
The driver wanted 50ILS initially but eventually agreed to take us back to town for 40ILS. It was a close thing as to whether he would take us or not. He was Palestinian and had a very short fuse. At one point he made the two-movement hand-wiping gesture that signals “finish” but we stayed in his car and he got us back to our destination. He fingered a string of gold-coloured worry beads while he was driving, he had a very creased face, and he was listening to Arabic talkback on the radio. We relented with the fare because it was very hot and we didn’t want to be stranded in the open at that time of day. We got back to the hotel at around 2.15pm. At 3.15pm it was still 36 degrees Celcius.
Outside my window at 4pm some stores were open and others were shut. Friday is the holy day for Muslims. I had noticed that despite the number of cheap take-away joints in the downtown area there are not very many sit-down restaurants there. People don’t seem to eat out a lot unless it is to have a shawarma, a pizza, a bagel, or a hamburger. The types of restaurants that you find all over the CBD in Sydney are just not available here in any great numbers.
Women here often wear snoods or tichels (scarves) on their heads indicating that they are devout and married, so perhaps they do all of the cooking that is needed, in their homes. It is weird though, considering the large numbers of tourists who come to Jerusalem each year, that the main destination for people who want to eat out is the high-class area around the YMCA where we had been based during the first three days of our stay. The downtown area is a bit of a wasteland at night so tourists probably gravitate to the tony area which is Mamilla Avenue, with its clothing stores and other boutiques. To get a decent meal for two for less than A$100 in the downtown area is difficult as there are only three or four such restaurants in the whole precinct.
But it was a relief coming to Israel for two main reasons. One is the ability to use a credit card to make purchases and to take cash out of an ATM. I had made arrangements before leaving Sydney to cover the expenses of the trip but Amman and Petra had not been cheap, so I wanted to save the US dollars I had brought.
The other thing that is radically different from Amman, despite the greedy Israeli taxi drivers, is the general sense of order that prevails in Jerusalem. Every three or four minutes after dark you see a police car driving down Jaffa Street with its lights flashing (cop cars always drive around here with activated beacons) but at least the pedestrian crossings have traffic lights and you can walk to the other side of major thoroughfares without risking life and limb. This sets the city apart from Amman. On the other hand the food in Amman is amazing, if you buy the local dishes.
What links Jordan and Israel? The languages when spoken sound remarkably similar to the untrained ear, for a start. Some of the sounds that are used preponderantly are the same. Both Arabic and Hebrew writing goes from right to left, moreover. And devout people in both countries seem to cleave to similar values that are based on the family and on monogamy. In both countries, furthermore, you don’t see many dogs. There are also dietary similarities linking the two cultures and the types of music that people enjoy in both places have strong similarities.
Beggars seem to be better off in Israel. I saw some sad sights in Amman. One young woman with no legs was stationed on a street in the downtown area when we passed on the pavement. She was doing something to her hair but it was clear why she had been put there. Another woman with a complete face covering was begging with two disabled children who had been placed on a blanket on the pavement in the downtown area. It was terribly sad and you just don’t see such cases in Jerusalem although you do see beggars. You also come across young people trying to fund charitable causes around Jaffa Street and they use English to approach foreigners if they think they can make some money out of them.
At 5.25pm we went out to find some food but most of the shops and restaurants were shut because it was the Sabbath the next day and Jews start to pray the night before. We asked some elegantly-dressed orthodox who were walking down the middle of Jaffa Street, on our way back from dinner, where they were going.
After leaving the hotel though we didn’t find anything that caught our fancy in the downtown area so we headed along Mamilla Avenue again and entered the old town. We went into the Armenian Tavern at 6.05pm and ordered an Ararat steak, a green salad, a Goldstar beer and a glass of mango juice. The food was ordinary but it did the job and we paid (174ILS) and left, then dropped into a supermarket (actually more like a well-stocked convenience store) and bought some beers and some fruit juice (54ILS). We got back to the hotel at 7.30pm.
Above: The underground section of the Western Wall dating from the time of Herod.
Above: The blocks used here are estimated to weight 500 tonnes.
Above: Some American tourists dealing with a Jerusalem taxi.
Above: The Armenian Tavern is a strange mix of old and new. The waiters have tattoos and they play soft jazz on the stereo. The decor is antique however.
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