Jerusalem

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We crashed hard. I fell asleep thinking I was never going to sleep and awoke at 6 am, wondering what that light was streaming through the windows. A quick check out the windows showed the sun still fighting the good fight with the clouds. The edge still went to the clouds.

In case any of you have forgotten, I am a moron. The plan for the day called for a twenty minute walk to the Monastery of the Cross, followed by a trip to the Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then we would go towards the Old City for a Segway tour. For the evening, I had paid for a midnight bicycle tour. Remember the part where I am a card carrying moron.

Being the generous jerk Cindi married, I said maybe we could take a taxi to the Monastery of the Holy Cross. She said that would be fine but during our much better second day breakfast in the YMCA dining room, (the scrambled eggs were less crunchy than day one) we noticed there were far fewer torrents of rain lashing the building. Actually, it looked like it was drying up. Cindi said we could walk to the Monastery. I was so sure that the rain was gone, that I chose not to wear my raincoat.

It was fine walk to the Church of the Holy Cross, so named because the tree from which Jesus’s Cross was made grew on the site. The one thing I did not find in my research of the place was an opening time. So, when we walked up to the yellow stone building at 8:30, it was only to find out they opened at 10:00. The sign also pointed out this was a Holy Place. This is a very prevalent sign so far.

Since we wanted to be the Israel Museum at it’s 10:00 am opening, we left the Monastery. We took our first non-rain soaked photos looking back towards the Monastery in it’s field of Mustard while we climbed up to the Museum.

The Museum sits on a hill with other important Israeli buildings like the Knesset and the Supreme Court. We had plenty of time before the museum opened so we headed to the Knesset first.

It was very quiet around Israel’s parliament. The closest we could get to the building was a glass barrier. The lone guard didn’t pay us too much attention as he talked on his phone. I kept having spy novel flashbacks about how would you suborn the guard at the Knesset. Simple, send in two spies posing as American tourist to chat him up and distract him.

Around the Knesset we saw these crows that had this area of grey feathers on their backs. In honor of the wedding I have dubbed them the morning coat crows. Across from the Knesset, was a large Menorah donated to Israel by the British. It is very close to the giant star of David sitting in the roundabout. We visited the rose park in the hopes of getting a better view back into the Old City but there is a ridge line between the Knesset’s hill and the Old City.

We headed back to the Israel Museum still rain free. We arrived just in time for the opening. I stood in line for tickets for what seemed my entire adult life watching the women in front of me talk on her cel phone while simultaneously grilling the bored ticket seller. Since the whole conversation was in Hebrew, I’m going to assume it was very important.

A little drizzle fell as we darted to the Tomb of the book where they exhibit the Dead Sea Scrolls. The women handing out the maps suggested going there first to avoid crowds. Once again we had audio guides to tell us what was what.
The scrolls are housed in this odd building mostly underground with this white dome atop of it that is supposed to look like the end of a giant scroll. For some reason the outside dome sits in the middle of a pool and is constantly sprayed by multiple jets of water. The jets were probably not needed with all the rain.

Cindi and I entered through the exit along with several other people and managed to avoid some big tour groups in our wake.

At first I was disappointed that the main scroll that was the focus of the circular room was actually a facsimile. It’s a reproduction of the only scroll they have that is completely intact and it is too delicate to exhibit anymore. However around the main scroll are several exhibits of actual fragments of other scrolls. My first thought was the original scroll writers had excellent penmanship. I guess if you are writing for the ages, your lines better be straight.

The lines of text were perfectly straight and each character looked like it came out a printer. It was fabulous to look at writing almost two thousand years old.

The audio guides here were as exhaustive as the ones at Yad Veshem. Immensely informative and immensely long descriptions. There were actually two levels of guide. One was the facts, the other was a reenactment of a play about the community that had written the scrolls. I heard about ten seconds of the play.

If I haven’t mentioned it, I hate tourists. I don’t know how they are allowed to exist. My favorite tourist behavior on display at the Temple of the Scrolls was a women reading the information placard to the exhibit out loud to her husband standing next to her. As if for some reason, he couldn’t read the card himself because it was only seen by the wife.

It took me some time, but I eventually noticed there was second level below the current level in the Temple of the Scroll. Stairs led down to another exhibit of the Aleppo Codex. Until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found the 10th century Aleppo Codex was the oldest form of the Hebrew bible. Scholars had studied it for years. If I remember my audio guide, it was thought to be burned in 1948 as the Arab world destroyed all the Synagogues in response to the announcement of the state of Israel. But most of it was smuggled out before the mass burnings.

One of the most amazing things was a scrap of the codex a scholar had carried in his wallet for thirty years as good luck charm. The fragment was found in the burned ruins at Aleppo.

Rain fell as we exited the building so we decided to go inside the museum rather than wander the extensive grounds. The first thing that greeted us entering the museum was a twenty foot tall statue of a naked African Man complete with to scale penis. Quite the eye opener.

We almost bypassed the exhibit on the mesoamericas since we wanted to see stuff about the Middle East. But that would have been a mistake. There were tons of statues in the exhibit, each one fabulously weird. The best part was the nice man who said I could take pictures as long as I didn’t use a flash.

Probably the wildest thing in the collection was a two foot tall man statue covered in nails used by Witch Doctors to cast spells. there must have been a hundred nails driven into the idol.

Cindi and I next found our way to the Archeology Exhibit. The first thing we saw were thousand year old stone mask, quite a few of which reminded me of the Jason Mask from the Friday the 13th movies. After that it was an avalanche of amazing exhibits. We saw 780000 year old remnants of the oldest hearth. There was skeleton of a woman buried with her dog. Giant floor mosaics showing Achilles were on display.

They had the Ossuary of Jesus’s Brother John next to the Ossuary of Caiphas’s son Joe. They had coins depicting the Roman Coliseum that was to commemorate it’s construction, built with funds taken from the sack of Jerusalem. By the time I left the exhibit passed the twenty foot tall apple core sculpture my mind was full of new information.

At one point, a security guard told me I could no longer wear my camera back-pack in the museum. I was told to hand carry it. I don’t know why this occurred but in her section of the museum those were the rules.

If I was carrying an explosive device would it make any difference if it was on my back or in my hand? If I was going to steal a full size sarcophagus, wouldn’t it be easier to slip it into my bag if the bag was in my hand rather than on my back?

Since the sun had made an appearance, we visited the outdoor half-acre size model of Jerusalem in the second temple period. The model is massive and gives a great indication of what Jerusalem looked like in the time of Christ. yes, I did want to jump the fence and play giant among the buildings.

Cindi started to crash from hunger, but I convinced her to walk through the sculpture garden to see this giant glistening metal sculpture that was either a weirdly growing tree or lightning striking the ground. The sun made an appearance to make the silver metal all shiny as we took pictures.

It was have food or be killed so we went to the cafeteria on the grounds to get a bite to eat.

Our brains were full. But we still had plenty of time, and by plenty I mean about an hour, until we had to be at the Old City for our Segway tour. The Monastery of the Cross was just a short walk down the hill and was now open. We could always take a taxi from the Monastery into town if times got tight.

Now the Monastery is owned by the Greeks and is a Greek orthodox facility. We arrived just in time to join up with a large group of Greek Orthodox Christian. They gave us a head start at viewing by having to wait at the door to assemble.

They drew ahead as I climbed stairs to take some pictures of the tower. But I won the race to the site of tree while they discussed all the paintings in the main chamber. I shooed out some other visitors to take pictures before the group filled in behind me. The leader of the group chastised me for wearing my hat.

Cindi must have been light headed because she agreed to walk to the Old City rather than take a taxi. We walked for about ten minutes before I realized we weren’t going to make it to ZuZu Segways in time for the tour. Now, I had sent off an email inquiring if the tours still departed in the inclement weather but hadn’t received a response. I was going on the assumption the tour was still on.

As we walk i started to hunt for a cab to take us, but all the ones that drove by either ignored us or had passengers. We passed a spot were five cabs sat by the road as the driver smoked cigarettes or drank coffee. I asked one of them to give us a ride, but he said it was only a seven minute walk to our destination. I told him our tour left in five minutes. None of the drivers were willing to take on that small of a fare.

So we quick stepped it. We saw arab protestors and consulates. The United States consulate seemed under protected with only few guards that were not marines. We arrived at 6 Kariv street five minutes late. There were no Segways at what appeared to be an apartment building rather than a place of business. We asked a guard but he hadn’t seen anyone but he thought they usually met on the other side of the street. ( I came back later to the same guard shack, behind which was the sign for ZuZu Segways)

We retreated to the hotel stopping at the Gas station for water and potato chips. I’m on vacation dammit.

In my email queue were five messages from ZuZu. The first messages were about canceling our reservation and maybe rescheduling next week. The other was about our midnight bike tour which I thought was through Jerusalem Biking but turns out they are run by the same company. the last pleas was to contact them immediately as they were leaving the office for the Sabbath and wouldn’t be available after 2pm. It was 2:45 when I read the messages. Oh, well.

The lack of an afternoon tour left us with time to spare. We could have hung out in the room, but I decided the city of Jerusalem was just waiting for the viewing, so back out we went. Before we left, I made a reservations at the Arabesque restaurant at the American Colony Hotel. As soon as I hung up the phone, I realized we wouldn’t have enough time for dinner if we wanted to make the bike tour.

I recreated my lost rambling for Cindi in the hopes of gaining entry into the Armenian Quarter to find the church of Saint James. All we found were locked gates. Later I found out, the gates are only open from 3 to 3:30. Since we were close, we headed to the Western Wall so Cindi could go up and say a prayer.

We stumbled north and happened upon the via Dolorossa the traditional rather than actual path Christ walked to Golgotha. We made it into two churches that were stations of the cross, making it into Ecco Home church just as they were closing the gate. That seems to be our theme.

In a brilliant move, I decided to lead Cindi deep into the residential section of Muslim Jerusalem. We walked a couple blocks up Herod’s ascent before quickly finding our way back to the Via Dolorossa.

We stopped for dinner at Emile Amigo based on the beauty of the carved stone vaulted arches and the fact the Maitre’d wasn’t standing in the doorway smoking. That seems to be the case in most restaurants to have a smoker blocking the door while beckoning customers.

Of course while we were enjoying our special chicken dinners and remarking on the fact our host wasn’t smoking, he stepped outside with the cook for a quick smoke. Food was still really good but the faint smell of smoke wafting in took off a little of the luster.

Back to the hotel we climbed with only one slight wrong turn into the Latin Patriarchate.

Time for the moron part.

Cindi by now had decided it was too wet and miserable to take the 9pm Midnight Bike ride through Jerusalem. I was almost going stay in the room, too, but since I had already given them the non-refundable payment, I figured I should go back to Kariv St and see if they showed up. I had a dream that they would not show and I could go back to my nice warm bed.

Despite it being freezing and wet, I did wear my bike shorts instead of sensible pants. I left early and arrived with plenty of time to kill. There was no sign of a man or a bicycle. I wandered towards the stop light at the base of the incline that led to Jaffa Gate. My big fear was my first time on the bike in five or six years, I would have to ride up that incline or push it up which would more likely be the case.

Unfortunately, the tour guide arrived as well as two other cyclists, one from Germany and one from Slovenia. The bike ride would commence. Our guide Roy, his name was actually something else but poor foreigners found it easier to say Roy , gave us a quick run down about the bikes and we headed off. I did get the he’s cool look when I clamped my GoPro to the front handlebars.

Our first stop was just across the street at a brand new sculpture of the world that symbolized Jerusalem’s place in the old world and then the new. We then continued on away from the old city to a bridge that overlooked Gehenna or Jewish hell. They used to do human sacrifices in this area. Also it’s the spot that at the end days will open up to hell.

We continued up the hill with me struggling to get the right gear on my shifter to the Hass Promenade and some famous fountain, famous for having a pigeon with breasts. It was probably famous for something else, but I just remember the bit about the pigeon with breasts and braided hair. The Haas Promenade gives a great overlook to the city and has the city’s aqueduct flowing underneath it.

The bike ride was taking place on the sidewalks and the wrong side of the street. My bike law part of my brain was having fits at these two egregious actions.

When it started to rain, I knew Cindi would be extremely happy to be still back at the hotel. If she was with us, the misery would have been legendary. I wasn’t too happy about riding around with my camera bag on my back in the rain, either.

We stopped in a giant tented area at what was the original Jerusalem train station. It was a fine chance to dry off a little and offer up a prayer to stop the rain. The other two riders went to the bar and got shots of whiskey in effort to warm up.

The rain had lessened by the time we left. Our next stop was the Montfiore Windmill, sight of the first settlement outside the walls of the city. No one back in the 1860’s wanted anything to do with living beyond the protected barriers of the city walls. Eventually Montfiore paid people to live there.

We stopped by my hotel, the YMCA ,on our loop back to talk about it’s history and the history of the King David Hotel across the street. A wing of the King David was destroyed by the Isrealis back in 1948 as part of their war for Independence. I could see up to the third floor of the YMCA where the lights of our room were quite dark. Cindi would have laughed if she had noticed the four dripping cyclists standing on the sidewalk.

More gear and chain problems as we looped back to the old city through the New Gate. Roy told us about an international incident which occurred when a nun dropped her dentures onto the street which was part of No Man’s land. It took her three days and the cooperation of three governments to get them back.

After seeing the tomb of King David and trying to get in the traditional sight of the Last Supper in Mount Zion, we rode to an overlook of the Western Wall. Some people were annoyed that we were riding our bikes on the Sabbath. I responded I was Christian.

At our overlook, I decided to unpack the tripod and big Nikon. I was going to use it at least once on the trip after carrying it this whole way. I shot a couple pictures of the illuminated Dom of the Rock.

Our tour ended back at the Jaffa Gate with a ride down the handicapped ramp to the Mamilla shopping center parking lot where we had started. The Germans whined about being cold. I accosted them by telling them I thought the Germans were tougher.

Cold and wet, I climbed back up the hill to the YMCA to the warmth of my bed.