Today was a touristy/exploration day. Two other students and I walked from the HU campus to the old city in order to see the Western Wall and the array of religious buildings. Thanks to the Shabbat, it was pretty quiet throughout the city, allowing us to focus on the sites and not the security of our wallets. Unfortunately, this also meant that we weren’t able to take pictures at the Wall (I guess I’ll just have to go back again).

The two main churches we visited were the Church of the Redeemer and the Church of the Sepulchre. The Redeemer is a 19th century Lutheran church (fairly young compared to its neighbors) and keeping within the traditions of its faith, was filled with little ornamentation, save a small image of Christ above the altar. This church is most well known for its tower that offers a stunning view of all four corners of the old city . The only difficulty is climbing the narrow, winding stairs that don’t offer a lot of head room.

Next door was the Holy Sepulchre, a seventeen century old house of relics maintained by four different Christian sects. We were just passing through and therefore didn’t get a tour, so I will just allow the pictures to speak for themselves (I apologize for some of the blur, a flash wasn’t allowed).

We visited the Wall next, but as I said it was forbidden to use your camera on Shabbat. Nevertheless, it was an ethereal experience to see the structure that has been involved in so much strife between the three Abrahamic faiths (perhaps the greatest irony was that the nearby mosques sounded off the call to prayer just as we arrived).

After returning back to Mount Scopus, I went off by myself to the nearby British Cemetery, dedicated to the British subjects who died in Palestine (I’m not being political, it said Palestine on the monument) and Egypt during the First World War [INSERT PICTURES HERE]. There were crows everywhere, a fitting accent on the mood, or maybe just to ward of the stray cats that roam the rest of the city.

In the future, I'm just going to load pictures to Flickr and just add a hyperlink. Blogger isn't too helpful when it comes to placing images.