Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza - Part 52

Jerusalem and Ancient History.

It must have been exactly a year since I ended the full Biography of my travels and began this photo extravaganza. Initially, I decided to cover the entire photo career in just a few weeks. Instead, after a year, I'm still ongoing. I had far more photos of my life's travels than I first anticipated. Of the numerous trips I went on, only two were single-venue package holidays. The first one was to the Costa Brava in Spain, 1972. The second was our honeymoon in Rhodes, 1999. In the 27 years between, I travelled on my own as a backpacker.

However, as a newly-married man, backpacking still hadn't ended with the honeymoon. A year after our wedding, I was at it again, this time, accompanied by my beloved, who learned first-hand the ups and downs of independent travel. On the 2000 trip to Israel, we suffered two "downers". The first one could have landed my wife, 18 weeks pregnant, in a hospital bed after abandoning an attempted cycle ride encircling the Sea of Galilee. The second was us remaining stranded on the road from the summit town of Merkaz Hakarmel to Isfiya, after miscalculating the walking distance between the two towns.

Afterwards, rather than expressing regret, I had a story to tell. A story on how we could have lost our unborn, or having to spend a night huddled together on a roadside bench, having not realised, until it was too late, that we had arrived in the Holy Land on the eve of a national holiday, when everything across the land had already shut down. And how we were rescued from a potential night spent by the roadside by a passing car driven by a church pastor.

Among the "ups", Alex enjoyed cooking for both of us in the kitchen of the New Swedish Hostel in the Old City of Jerusalem. Added to that was when I watched her kneel down to pray inside the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ's burial, and also at the area of bare rock, the site of Christ's Agony, inside the Church of the Nations in East Jerusalem. With me, my "ups" included gazing at a section of a 3,000-year-old masonry making up a section of the wall of the City of David, a structure predating David's reign before taking over the Jebusite settlement. Another of my highlights, quite a contrast, too, was the four-hour bus ride to Eilat, where I took an opportunity to snorkel in the Red Sea and take underwater photos of the superb corals.

The Church of the Nations.

However, arriving at Jerusalem during the Autumn has allowed us not only to see the Jewish Sukkot, but to dine under one of the tents, or tabernacles, fixed outside a restaurant in the New City. By contrast with the Old City, which is under Arab administration, the Jewish New City is very much modern and Western, with wider streets flowing with traffic. That is, except for Ben Yehuda Street, which is pedestrianised. In 1976, during my first visit to the Holy Land, Ben Yehuda Street flowed with traffic, as did Zion Square, which intersected with Jaffa Street. 

When I returned in 1993, both Zion Square and Ben Yehuda Street were already pedestrianised, and a year later, in 1994, I witnessed a massive Jewish protest against the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for agreeing with Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, to make East Jerusalem Palestine's capital. Furthermore, the meeting between the two ministers took place at the Ron Hotel, the very venue where I stayed 17 years earlier after my initial arrival in 1976. It is now the Kaplan Hotel, an ideal backpacker's hostel.

Since 2000, which this album covers, we haven't returned to the Holy Land. Therefore, I never had any opportunity to see the extended archaeological discoveries around the City of David. This included the original Pool of Siloam, of which a sliver I have been familiar with since 1976. The site is earmarked to be refilled with water after 2,000 years of disuse and burial. In addition, the original Pilgrimage road extending from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount was discovered and excavated, still lined with shops, and most likely well known to Jesus and his apostles. This, too, is due to open for public access.

I believe that the City of David excavations are now open as a public museum, as documented on TV. A ticket will give access to the site, which includes wading through Hezekiah's Tunnel (although a candle or a torch is still required), a view of a recently excavated Pool of Siloam, and a walk through the Pilgrimage Street, none of which were accessible in my day, except the 2,700-year-old Tunnel. How the historicity of the Bible has recently been proved so true by archaeology!

However, one other archaeological site Alex and I visited was the excavations of the Pool of Bethesda, where Jesus healed a man crippled with paralysis for thirty years. In my day, only a part was excavated; the rest still remained buried. What we saw looked more like a scrapyard than an ancient resort, and I wondered whether the untidiness of the site was what remains when the city was razed to the ground by General Titus in AD 70. Of the five porches described in John's Gospel, at least one of them is visible from where we stood. Also fully excavated was a river dam, according to the archaeologists, which was built around 700 BC, thus likely to be part of the same water conservation project under King Hezekiah, to protect the supplies from the Assyrian invasion. In all, the whole site represents a stratum of ruins stretching from 700 BC to the Byzantine church built around 500 AD.

This week's album also covers the views from the summit of the Mount of Olives, the Church of the Nations, and its interior, and the Garden of Gethsemane. On the summit of the mount, there is the Chapel of the Ascension, the only chapel I have walked into that does not have an altar or pulpit. Instead, the small building encloses a foot-shaped indentation on the bare rock. Tradition says that when the resurrected Jesus took off for Heaven, he left his indentation there. The chapel of the Ascension is Muslim-owned, and there is a fee to pay for admission, unlike all the other churches.

As for the Temple Mount, or the Haram al-Sharif, as it's also known, it was nothing like the drawing I made of it at school around 1965 (mentioned last week). Rather, it is a huge, flat platform levelling off the upper slopes of the hill. It was on this platform where the Temple once stood, now occupied by the Muslim Dome of the Rock. In front, the eastern wall is divided by the Golden Gate, sealed by Sultan Suleiman in 1541, and which only the Jewish Messiah could reopen when he returns to enter Jerusalem.

Click here for the Index to link to the main Biography, Weeks 123-128, for a more detailed account of this trip.

Photos of Jerusalem.

Inside Christ Church, Sukkot decorations.

Booths, or tents, were seen all over the New City.

Orthodox Jews were happy to pose for us.

Sukkot tents or booths cross the street.

Ben Yehuda Street celebrates Sukkot.

We even dined in a booth one evening.

At the City of David, 1,000 BC.

City of David masonry, 1,000 BC.

Outside the Church of St Anne, Bethesda.

Bethesda ruins.

A Byzantine Church dominates the ruins.

River Dam 700 BC, and one of the 5 Porches.

An untidy site left from 70 AD? Just a guess.

More Bethesda Ruins.

Another view of one of the 5 porches. 

Inside the Church of Dominus Flevit, Mt of Olives.

The Dome of the Rock and the Golden Gate

The Russian Church of Mary Magdaline.

Temple Mount as seen from the Mt of Olives.

Alex prays at the Garden of Gethsemane.

Ancient Olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Alex prays at the Site of the Agony, Church of the Nations.

Looking across to the Dome of El Asqua Mosque.

Byzantine ruins near Temple Mount.

I pose at the Chapel of the Ascension.

Alex reveres the imprint of Christ's foot.

At Souk Muristan. Shops are closed due to the unrest.

A Byzantine Shop structure at the Cardo.

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Next Week, after visiting the Dominican Abbey, Alex and I head for Eilat.

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.

Backpacking student, cooking for us.

Near Jaffa Gate.

Souk Al Zytoun El Shafa

El Shafa is now geared for tourism.

Souk David, where our hostel was.

On the roof of the Citadel.

Another view of us on the roof.

From the roof, the Old City and the Mt of Olives.

The Muslim Quarter and the city wall,

Looking into the Citadel Archaeology Museum.

The Mount of Olives is behind us.

Modern glassware among ancient ruins.

Old and new. A panoramic view of the site.

Hashmonian masonry, 1st Century BC.

A glass sphere in a Hashmonian doorway.

I sit on a Roman wall.

Roman masonry, around 40 BC.

A Crusader Door, 12th Century AD.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

I stand at Golgotha.

They took down the body of Jesus.

The traditional site of the Crucifixion.

A full view of the burial.

Slab where the body was laid.

Secure Entrance to the Western Wall.

One of the quieter times at the Wall.

The Day of Atonement. Orthodox Jews could only pray.

With no Temple, the Day of Atonement is a shadow.

It was my turn to pose at the Wall.

Alex at the Ladies' section of the Wall.

Our final visit.

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Next Week, Sukkot in the New City, the Pool of Bethesda, Mt of Olives views.