The Old City

On the morning of my arrival in Jerusalem Max and Brooke took me in tow and we spent several hours in the Old City, exploring the Christian, Jewish and Armenian Quarters, visiting the Church of the Redeemer, the Russian Orthodox Alexander Hospice (which also is a shrine to the 8^th Station of the Cross) and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We also saw the Western Wall in the distance from the rooftops and especially from the great bell tower of the Church of the Reedemer. (More about all of those sites in subsequent posts).

The Old City is filled with a fascinating mix of peoples, wares, religious objects, sights and smells. This is, after all the place where the boundaries of race, religion and politics merge most dramatically. Walking down the narrow, dark streets—some covered, some in the open air—you may see in one sequence Hasidic Jews with books in their hands, Arab merchants, Catholic nuns, tourists from many nations, Orthodox priests and Israeli soldiers with automatic weapons in their hands.