Someone told me recently that there are lots of Africans coming to visit Israel, apparently its because countries like Nigeria, the government gave Moslem people free trips to Mecca, as most Moslem people try to make a pilgrimage there at least once during their life.   The Christian people thought thats not fair, can’t we have a free trip to Jerusalem to see the home of our faith?  So this was agreed and now large numbers of Nigerian Christians have been coming since.

I spotted a brightly dressed group here:

Above if you look carefully on the right there is some wedding pictures taken place, its a good job you can still get nice photos against the backdrop of the old walls despite the mess around the streets with the electric light rail system being built.

Was at the Kotel (Western Wall) last weekend, I noticed and some other people were a bit alarmed to see smoke in the distance by the Mount of Olives.  Checked the news later, didnt see any thing about any possible terrorist activity or anything else bad.

Have noticed lately that quite a few mostly Arab people use these brightly coloured blue and green hand carts to carry their wares up and down the stairs around the old city, the steps have sloped stones in the middle.   The back of the carts have a tyre draping down from a piece of rope, think this is to stop the cart from running away if the person operates it lets go by accident.