Monday, March 1st

View of Old City from Mt. of Olives

The Free's

View from Palm Sunday Road

"Mary's Taxi"

Free's and Jan Hayes on Palm Sunday Road

Garden of Gethsemane

Mosaic in Church of All Nations

The Golden Gate

Memorial to Ghetto Children

Holocaust Historical Museum

Middle Eastern Lunch

At Lunch

Bullet Riddled Zion Gate

Old Roman Avenue

Western Wall Plaza

Men (L) and Women (R) at Western Wall

Along the Via Dolorosa

Sweets



Church of the Holy Sepulcher



Worshipers at Stations 11 and 12

Catholic Tomb Site

View from Jaffa Gate at Night

The bus picked us up at 8:15 am for the drive to Jerusalem for a day of sightseeing in the city.  Our first stop was on Mt. Scopis for a view of the city from the Mt. of Olives.  This gave us a view of the city and the Golden Gate and Lion’s Gate.  Walking from the Mt. of Olives took us along the Palm Sunday walk to the Dominus Flevit, which is the place where Christ wept over Jerusalem; with a small church built on the site.    In front and below the sanctuary is a Russian Orthodox church with golden onion domes.  Continuing on the road we pass the huge cemetery on the left had side and then arrived at the Garden of Gethsemane and the large Church of the Nations.  The large olive trees are purported to be over 2,000 years old.  All the time, the Eastern wall of the city is in front of us. 

After boarding the bus, we drove to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum.  We walked along the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations where trees have been planted for Gentiles who were known individuals who saved lives of Jewish people during the Nazi Holocaust.  Along the way, we saw the tree for Oskar and Emily Shindler.  This walkway led us to the shrine to the 1.5 million children lost during the Holocaust.  It consisted of a dark chamber through which you walked in the reflected light from 3 candles that produces 1.5 million flame images while the names of the children are being recited.  From there we walked through the very impressive Holocaust Historical Museum, which is a long triangular corridor built into the side of the mountain.  There are 10 exhibition halls located off the corridor with each covering a particular period or chapter of the Holocaust.  The design is a zig-zag arrangement of these 10 halls that requires you to cross the corridor each time to reach the next hall.  As you cross the main hallway, you notice that the triangular light wall of glass at the end of the tunnel appears to become bigger until you exit through it into the world.  The museum covers in detail through 2,500 personal items donated by survivors, recovered records and movies, and first-hand accounts from individuals from the rise of the Nazis in 1933 through the death camps in Europe.  It is very well done and really quite over-whelming and sobering in its impact on the observer.  After exiting the Historical Museum, we entered the Hall of Remembrance, which is stark and tomblike inside with the names of 21 of the main concentration camps engraves on black slabs on the floor, a casket containing ashes from the cremation ovens, and an eternal flame.

Before heading to Old Jerusalem, we stopped for lunch at a middle-Eastern restaurant and had an excellent lunch containing an assortment of salads, hummus, and kabobs.  Then we drove to the old city and entered through the Zion Gate that led us to “David’s Tomb” and to the “Upper Room” sites.  All the streets in the old city are very narrow and typically consist of a lot of steps, because the city is very hilly.  Along the way we passed an area that had been excavated down to the Roman column lined avenue on the edge of the Jewish Quarter.  Continuing on we arrived at the Western Wall Plaza where worshippers were gathered in both the men’s and women’s sections at the wall.  The lower portion of the wall contained the massive stones from the Herodian period of the Temple Mount and the upper sections had the smaller stones from Roman and later periods.  Leaving the plaza we connected with the Via Dolorosa with the various stations of the cross and walked along the way.  This took us through very narrow walkways past numerous shopping stalls and ended at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher containing stations 11-14.  We were most fortunate, because at the time in the late afternoon, there were relatively few visitors and we could easily visit the interior religious sites.  Stations 11 & 12 commemorate the nailing to the cross and crucifixion and were located upstairs in a Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic chapel where part of the rock of Golgotha is exposed.  Station 13 is the stone of unction where the body was anointed and wrapped for burial and Station 14 is the tomb; both of which are located on the main church floor.  There are though several tombs – Catholic/Orthodox, Armenian, Syrian, and Protestant -- all of which claim to be the tomb.  The first three are located next to each other and the Catholic/Orthodox site had a long line.  The other two were easily visited.  The Protestant site is located outside in a garden and was not visited.  On the lower level is the chapel dedicated to St. Helena who discovered various religious sites and relics in the 4^th century CE.    

We left Jerusalem around 7:00 pm and arrived back in Tel Aviv at 8:30 pm after a very long day of walking and sightseeing.  Tomorrow we are off to Masada, Qumram, and the Dead Sea.