Today Noa and Asaf and I went to Jerusalem. You may have heard of it.
Actually the first stop was...this other place...OK, I didn't quite catch the name. It was on the outskirts of the city with a spring and churches and landscape views. So quiet you felt like it was the middle of nowhere, it was just us, one tour group, and a couple of monks hanging around.
After that we hit the museum of the history of the city, which was cool, although more for the views from the tower and the location than for the exhibits - or the extremely light on info video explaining everything in 15 minutes with pictures of cartoon people fighting, which basically went as follows: "First some people were here, then King David, then Alexander the Great, then some other stuff happened, and Romans, then Christians and Muslims a bunch of times, then World War I, Jerusalem is awesome, the end!" (There may have been a few more facts than I just mentioned, but not many. And it did end at WWI.)
We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they stuck Jesus, although depending who you ask he may not have stayed put there. The highlight was while waiting in line to get into the actual tomb, the following overheard convo.
fellow tourist: What is this the line for?
priest (I think) who had just been making weird misogynistic jokes: The tomb.
fellow tourist: Of who?
Anyway, that was enough Christianity, so next we went to the western wall. Which was really interesting. The women's side is naturally tiny and crowded, with this line of women all in black right up front praying and touching the wall, some of their prayer books and foreheads smashed up against it, all swaying back and forth but not in unison. The white in all the cracks is thousands of scraps of paper with prayers written on them. I felt like Noa and I were the least religious people there, like aliens, and strange about it. Some people were crying. Although I have felt like crying many times on this trip so far, this was not one of them. I felt very disconnected. I felt such a distance between myself and those women that it put a distance between me and the wall also - I didn't actually go up and touch it.
More markets, although I refused to bargain today.
Then it was time for some well-earned coffee and pastries.
Well, back in Tel Aviv suburbs, what could top that great adventure? Raya and Tamir and I decided on an expedition to the lousy supermarket. (I was told ahead of time how lousy it was, I didn't make that value judgement.) While we were there, Raya, who was devastated that Julia had beat her to giving me a Krembo, was determined to find a fancier Krembo to get for me. But there weren't any. Tamir explained that this was because the motto of the lousy supermarket is, "If it's nice, we don't have it."
Tomorrow is my last day in Israel, and the last real day of my trip. Wow, that snuck up fast. I'm so not ready to go home yet - where do I apply for an extension? Please don't make me go back to the midwest...I hear it's really cold there and the tomatoes don't taste like anything...please??
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