Frank's Christian Thoughts: Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza

Saturday, 6 December 2025

Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza - Part 51.

Arrival in Jerusalem.

Throughout my travel career, spanning 28 years from 1972 to 2000, Israel played a significant role. I have been there four times. These were in 1976, 1993, 1994, and, as this album covers, 2000. Of the four trips, the last one wasn't on my own, but with my wife, Alex, who was then pregnant with our first daughter.

The first trip, made in 1976, was the fruit of studying the Bible after I was converted to the Christian faith towards the end of 1972. As this week's blog was written in December, I can now say that it was exactly 53 years since that wet Saturday evening, while I was sitting in a London pub, when I first believed.

Stuck in the back of my mind, even as an imaginative twenty-year-old, I recall a Religious Education class at school, around 1965 or thereabouts, where the emphasis seemed to have been more on the school uniform than learning something useful. The male RE master told us to draw the mountain in Jerusalem topped with the Temple. I had never seen such a thing, not even in pictures or book illustrations, let alone having visited the area. Imagining a mountain resembling Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn in the Alps, I drew an outline of a similar high mountain, and then stuck a small square on the summit, correctly assuming the Temple was a building of some sort. There was no feedback from the teacher.

Looking back, the teacher's silence on that issue reflected his belief that such lessons were not important to us. In other words, they were irrelevant to adult life, yet he was aware of his duty to educate us. He was better suited to the bright academic whose adult career would be just as secular as my future working life, with Jerusalem being little or no relevance to him. Yet, with me, the concept of a special building on the summit of a mountain meant something to me.

Then there was our cane-wielding Deputy Headmaster, who would clip the ear of any student if he so wished. During one morning assembly, he shared his experience relating to his younger days when he served during the Palestinian mandate. He told us all about how he had visited the Star of Bethlehem and described it. Of the several hundred pupils making up the entire school, who all sat on the floor, I have wondered how many of us actually travelled to the Holy Land to see the star for himself, besides me, several years later in 1976.

At the Star of Bethlehem, 1976.

Therefore, one could imagine how surprised I was when I saw the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City for the first time! It was nothing like I had imagined it to be. Those were the early days of solo backpacking, and as a neophyte, I was still getting to grips with surviving on my own in a faraway non-European country.

How different things were in 2000. This time, I was strolling with my wife on the same roofed street, or souk, as I did back in 1976, except that the street was modified to make it more suitable for Western tourists. By 2000, the central drainage gutter was paved over, and many shops concentrated on selling tourist tat.

In 1976, while I was strolling through this street, I passed the entrance to an Arab hotel, little more than a doorway between two shops, one on either side of it. Back then, I made a mental note of it, but with the accommodation already fixed up, I gave it no more attention.

However, during my second and third visits to Jerusalem in 1993 and 1994, respectively, this lone doorway became my accommodation in Jerusalem's Old City. By 1993, it became a backpacker's hostel, and its mixed-gender dormitory was fine by me. It was accessible 'off the street', that is, I simply walked in, climbed the stairs, and at the reception, asked if there was a bed. I was never turned away.

In 2000, Alex and I boarded an Egged bus from Haifa to Jerusalem. It was quite a walk from the Hebrew Bus Station, along Jaffa Road, to the Old City and Jaffa Gate leading to Souk David. In 2000, Jaffa Road was a traffic thoroughfare; at present, the street is closed to traffic and now carries tram lines.

Alex and I strolled along Jaffa Road and even paused to browse in the indoor Mahaneh Yehudah Market. Eventually, we arrived at Jaffa Gate and entered the Old City. Some way down Souk David, we arrived at the hostel, so familiar to me, and entered.

As I said before, the concept of hostelling was anathema to Alex. But since 1994, I was already aware that there was a bedroom with a proper marriage bed, like in any hotel. The young Arab receptionist first showed us an empty dormitory with single bunk beds. We turned it down. Then he showed us the bedroom. We gladly accepted and paid for the rest of our stay in Jerusalem.

The name of the hostel was the New Swedish Hostel. Apart from dormitories and a room with a double bed, there was a tiny bathroom and the main room, which served as a kitchen, laundrette, dining room and lounge. It also served as a bedroom for the receptionist. The ceiling of the main dormitory was domed, in keeping with Medieval characteristics. It was here in Israel that I had shown Alex the ins and outs of backpacking. Unlike our honeymoon in Rhodes, which was a pre-booked single-venue package holiday, this was independent backpacking covering three venues - Tiberias, Isfiya, and Jerusalem, with two of the three sleeping venues accessible from the street. At the New Swedish Hostel, we went shopping together, and Alex was willing to cook for both of us.

This week's album is confined mainly to the Old City, including the Citadel and the Archaeology Museum next to the Jaffa Gate, along with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is the traditional site of the Crucifixion and Burial of Jesus Christ. However, there was unrest between the Israelis and the Palestinians during our stay. Hence, I couldn't take Alex to the Temple Mount to see the beautiful Dome of the Rock, nor was I able to take her to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity. And due to her pregnancy, I kept her away from Hezekiah's Tunnel, as the claustrophobic environment might have unsettled her.

Hezekiah's Tunnel, 1976.

Like with the honeymoon, these pics weren't originally intended for publication; therefore, since the original photo album was about our first Wedding Anniversary, we appear frequently throughout the album. But now, we are both happy to show them to the world, and to tell our story of our adventures as a newly-married couple, and despite our setbacks, backpacking will always remain in our memories, warts and all.

Click here for the link to the Index, where you can be directed to Weeks 123-128, which covers this holiday in detail.

Photos of Jerusalem Old City, 2000.

At the multi-purpose lounge, Jerusalem.