We woke early on our last day to go onto the Temple Mount,Mount Moriah, as we wanted to avoid the crowds. The number of tourists in Jerusalem seems to be a lot greater than two years ago and they seem to swarm everywhere and if they take over a site then two people “can’t get to see nothing”.
The Temple Mount area was very quiet with only the sound of the birds in the trees we walked around a little bit and we were amazed at the amount of work being done. The area above Solomon’s Stable’s has been completely repaved and there are piles of rubble in the gardens. We thought that no work was allowed on the site …
Back at the hotel we had breakfast and then waked into the New City for the last time. We collected the CD
of the images form our Dead Sea photographs, and while we were in the area we checked our flight details at El Al, and Jen was a whole lot happier with this after our experience in 2006. Lunch at a semi self service cafe ARCAFFE` was nice, Many of the cafe’s and coffee shops have a counter where you order and then sit down at a table and your food is brought to you a concept that seems to work well in Israel.
While walking to Eli the Torah scribe we saw that Harood and Avo, Armenian shop owners, were opening their shop, they had been asked to open for a tour group, and insisted that we return later for a final good bye…
As Eli was not yet we stopped into so Dov and Moshe @ Shorasim, they helped liberate a few more of our last shekels, on a few items and a gift for our once guide, now friend, Suzanne. [Suzanne you will have to wait for it to arrive to find out what it is….]
We went back to Eli and sat and chatted for a while. He had made us a parchment for our mezuza, and as we have found so many times that when getting involved in a conversation the Israeli’s are very warm and friendly.
Back across the Old City we had a cool drink with Harood and Avo who seem convinced that we will be back… Jen tried very hard not to contradict them too much
A visit to the Last Ditch Battle exhibition was fascinating; it is a series of
photographs taken by a photo journalist during the battle for the Jewish quarter in 1947. A video, only in Hebrew, told the story with interviews of the survivors and clips from original archival film.
A phone call from the first temple museum (they had early been fully occupied by a number of school groups), saw us returning to view the exhibition. It was very interesting and often connecting parts of the story we had seen and heard at the City of David. Part of the explanation included the development of the Hebrew alphabet and a illuminated display of the City and temple at the end of the First Temple period. The video, shown on two screens with a model illuminated with spot lights, told a story of the city in a dynamic and unusual way.
Back at the hotel we squeezed our clothes and all the gifts and goodies we had bought into our cases, trying to distribute the heavy and or breakable to hand luggage. We were convinced that we would be overweight as our bags weighed a total of 38 kg’s when we left, and our hand luggage was light.
A quick walk down to Ha Kotel to say goodbye is always bitter sweet, sweet to be at the wall and bitter to be leaving. Jen was her usual sensitive self and cried … just a little. It seems like we are leaving home to go home.
Mohamed, our friendly taxi driver arrived just after 7:00pm to take us to the airport. He is a warm and friendly person always willing to please and chat, pity not all taxi drivers are the same.
The security check at the Ben Gurion Airport was as we have come to expect, at least this time we did not have to unpack our suitcases as before. We think their x-ray machines are getting better, it was just the Dead Sea mud again that was flagged as suspect and once that was checked (Rob had packed it near the top), we were cleared through.
We had supper at one of the many food outlets similar to the one we had had lunch at early in the day and after sitting playing on the laptop our flight was finally called at 12:30 AM