Lily, Caden, & Gia Lovers: Jerusalem, Israel

Hi to all my fans, it's Lily. If you don't already know me from this blog, which would be impossible because the blog is mostly about me, you most likely know me from my viral series of "Lily Eats Meat".

Anyways, I was abruptly woke at 8:30 to get ready for breakfast. After breakfast we took a taxi to (somewhere in Jerusalem) idrk. [We met at the Jaffa Gate]. We got this huge bagel thing it was really good. After that we met up with our tour guide (Daniela) - she was really nice I liked her. And then our day long tour began... today we were focused on the Jewish Quarter and the 3,000 year history.

You tear off a piece of bagel, tear again to get to the middle, and then dip it into Za-atar, which is provided in a little napkin pouch. So delicious!

First we walked to the city of David while she was telling us A LOT of interesting facts about Jerusalem's history with the religions and Kings etc. [The city is divided into for quarters - Jewish, Armenian, Muslim, and Christian and is walled in. It is called the "old city".]

The Tower of David

We walked throughout the city. One of the highlights was going beneath the city. We heard time and time again that Jerusalem is like a layered cake. It has been destroyed and rebuilt over thousands of years so there are layers upon layers of history. Due to the division into different religious quarters, aside from being home to about 35,000 people, excavation is made extra complicated.

We had the opportunity to go below the city to see the Gihon Spring. Below are Seb and I acting out the role off the Kinds of Judah.

We traveled on, flashlights in hand, into the Siloam tunnel where water went as high as our mid-thigh. You had to crouch down in the narrow tunnel carved into the rock. It was terrifying. There was a large group ahead of us, made up of high school kids, that were really loud and slowed our journey. We spent about 20 minutes walking through. Makes my heart race just thinking about it. Thankfully Gia bowed out at the start and she and my mom took a different route.

Here is a photo of the water-free tunnel Gia and my mom took.

Being claustrophobic gave us a chance to watch some excavating. It was interesting how many spots we were in that our guide said weren't even discovered when she started as a guide a decade ago.

We had another tunnel section, without water, to go to the part of the Western Wall underground. There is actually 8x more Western Wall underground than above ground! The reason being is that King Herod built up area of the Temple Mount in 10 BCE with retaining walls to make a bigger mountain. In 70 CE when the Romans destroyed the temple the retaining walls remained standing.

We did the visit the Western Wall, aka the "Wailing Wall" above ground too, but it was cool that we were able to place our prayers in the wall below ground. Apparently those do not get removed daily like they do at the wall above ground. So we wrote down a prayer on a piece of paper, and then shoved it into a crack in the wall. After that we got out of the cave-type thing and met back up with mom and Caden - who after the water tunnel passed on the Western Wall Tunnel. We came out onto the ruins of the temple from 70 CE.

Our prayers, tucked away

Caden and mom enjoying the cafe while we finished the underground tunnel tour

A sign of King Herod's work is the design of the brick with the pattern outlining the brick. Amazing that these have been standing for 3,000 years!

Dad is missing. He had his conference this day so just us and the Buser Family

Next we went to the Western Wall above ground. Here they have a separate area of prayer for men and women. There are book shelves filled with the Quran and pulpits for standing and reading (and rocking back and forth, which many Jews seemed to do), or holding the Quran up to your forehead as you pray and rock.

The men's side. A man told Caden and Paul they looked Jewish.

The women's wall

The women's wall was more exposed and not attached to underground tunnels. They are definitely not equal citizens, yet I no one seemed to care.

Then we walked through the markets to get to lunch. It started to rain, which apparently is a pretty rare occurrence in Israel this time of year.

The markets were really interesting tucked into this labyrinth of streets in the Old City.

Lunch was SOOOO good we got pita bread and hummus of course and a bunch of other delicious stuff.

After lunch the Daniela left us and we were left to navigate the markets all alone. We found these kittens in this guys shop and they were so freaking cute. He let us hold them and oh my lord, everyone fell in love. That was the highlight of today, by far :)

Mr. Buser, Seb, and Julia went home, and the rest of us stayed and walked around for quite awhile and kinda got lost, but we figured it out. I got this cute long white skirt and I got it for 50 shekels which is about 14 US dollars, but I negotiated because it used to be 120 shekels. We ended up walking away and the shop owner had his young son chase us down. My mom and I agreed, it felt exhilarating and depressing all at once.