Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7
Nice big house in centre of town
Arab store in the old city
Mostly brass ornaments in Arab market
On a junction towards the Kotel.
Tag Archives: Jerusalem
Kosher highway code & Middle east motorcycling expedition
Walking past an ultra orthodox neighbourhood, sometimes I see these signs a little different from other parts of town.
Driving is forbidden by religious Jews on Shabbat or on holidays, for everyone else secular Israelis, Arabs or foreigners should not drive past these signs in these neighbourhoods on those days as deemed to be highly disrespectful to this community, these signs are a reminder you are entering a religious area.
On the way home from work I saw these large high end looking motorcycles, four of them, Harley Davidsons and BMWs, just round the corner from Zion Square, where Ben Yehuda Street meets Jaffa Street. The owners are nowhere to be seen, but the bikes have been here two days now, the plates on the bikes are foreign. On closer inspection, they have come from Bulgaria. Zoom on the fuel tank for their tour. Going into Damascus, Syria, then through Israel and Egypt sounds like a nightmare to plan for your visa application though!
There isn’t a web site mentioned, a quick search with Google shows nothing, if this is your club, or you know who is doing this trip, please comment or add a link 🙂
King David Museum, Hezekiah’s tunnels and Silwan troubles
At the weekend I went around the outer parts of Jerusalem’s old city walls. Outside of the dung gate, is the south east corner, you head around the corner to see Absalom’s tomb and the Mount of Olives.
Here there is a junction which contains a volatile mix of neighbours. On the corner is an archaeological dig, containing artifacts that date from King David’s time. On the same street this is the entrance to the Arab town of Silwan. This is a much troubled district, and the name Silwan often comes up when there is news of conflicts in this city.
On the news this week you may have seen a picture of a car with a boy in the air upside down in the air having being hit by a car in Silwan after stoning this particular motorist, it seems the Subaru driver sped up or swerved to avoid being hit by the youths. Seems strange there happened to be someone with a camera who did such a perfect shot of this moment. http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=190682
A few houses from the corner is this Arab shop with political message outside.
About 3 or 4 more houses across is The City of David museum which has a cinema with a 3D film of biblical history of this place and a guided tour of the buildings and a chance to go under Hezekiah’s tunnels. I went here last year its well worth a visit. The tunnels are a mile long of walking – in complete darkness; and, upto your knees in water. 🙂 I didn’t get a picture of the exact front part of this as there armed guards in front. But looking through the windows you can see the nice decorations outside.
Looking behind back to the old city walls and there are about 40-50 soldiers in uniform getting off a bus. (not visible, but just around the corner) Glancing back to the museum front, there is a lone security guard, armed, but unusually (that I have never seen someone holding a handgun out of a holster) he has a pistol in his hand. Again, I glance down the street to see a group of Arab kids gather outside a shop. There is nervousness on both sides and the police and army are on alert from recent troubles.
Below you can see the green flag which has a logo representing Israel’s national parks and historical places. Heading down this street as a foreigner to see the museums is safe but because extra security measures in place, but just a short distance down here, not past the museum where this barrier is. Beyond this there are rowdy children throwing rocks at the fence where the historical digging is, there is rubbish everywhere and some of the cars look vandalised.
But here in the unpredictable middle east, throwing rocks can be a prelude to starting a war where each side retaliates. This is one of the many contested bits of property here, ironic given the historic sites and archeological digs that showed who lived here long ago.
I can’t emphasise enough “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” and I do feel sorry for the Arab people that live here and are given different messages by different authorities, I hope and pray that Arab people will find their way out of darkness of the regime that governs them (Hamas and Hezbollah) into the loving arms of the Father.
Worship event on the Haas Promenade
The Haas Promenade, close (1.5km uphill from my house) also known as the peace park had a special event on the sunday before last.
A worship event was on with several churches and Christian organisations jointly together. There was a speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, and one of the city’s chief Rabbis, and this was filmed on God TV. There was speakers from different Christian charities here and also a few Arab believers too.
This was a really good event, although I had to leave part way through, as it overlapped with the normal service at my regular church at 6pm.
In Sepia: Holyland pictures collection part 3
St Peter’s fish
This is a Tilapia, also known as St Peter’s fish. Commonly found in the Sea of Galilee, there are several restaurants in Tiberias (the largest city in this area) and places around Galilee.
Known as St Peter’s fish as its largely thought to be the creature that had the coin in its mouth in the bible. Matthew 17 : 24
I went down the market and bought one of these for dinner for friday. The fishmonger gutted it for me and rinsed with a shower head thing that was hanging on shelf. The market is a good place to get fresh fish, even if the man had a cigarette in his mouth whilst working.
This one is about 6-7 inches long and has dark grey scales and white flesh once cooked, it also has a row of tiny sharp teeth.
After Jesus’ resurrection, after his followers were in disbelief he had come back to see them, he asked Peter for a piece of the fish they were sharing, as way to prove a point he was not a ghost. Luke 24 : 40 I would take a bet it was some of this type of fish.
25 minutes under the grill at 150 and its looking good. I need a bit more skill at getting the bones in one go though. Also meant I found a use for some limes sitting in the back of the fridge. 🙂
I should of taken a photo before I cut the head off. 🙂
Caves in park in Yemin Moshe behind King David hotel
Behind King David Hotel is some more archeology.
Just realised this tomb has a circular stone rolled next to it. Look hard and you can see this tomb has an iron door too, which is locked.
This one is nearby, different to the one shown in the above three pics. Doesn’t have an obvious entrance.
Not sure who these tombs belonged to, or how old they are. Suggestions please?
Wasteland in the Armenian quarter inside Jerusalem’s old city walls
Before Yom Kippur I went walking on some walls with John on the old city again. You get to peek into the yards of Christian, Jewish and Arab people’s houses. For obvious reasons its not possible to go completely 360 degrees around because of the Al Asqa mosque is at the back and this part of the wall is not open there.
Still I got to see a few more things I had not previously seen.
Peaking over this side, this is the back of police station, there is a few horses with stable and exercise yard.
This is interesting. This is a panaromic shot, so these two walls actually join at a right angle where I am standing. This is the Armenian quarter of the old city. Ahead is the Armenian church and a car park, but lots of scruffy looking ground just going to waste. I thought this is odd as surely land within the old city must be very expensive and sort after, must be worth a million dollars maybe. I guess even a small square of land big enough to put an ice cream kiosk would be expensive to rent. Its blacked by fire as it appears someone has burnt all the weeds that are growing here. A hotel or some nice flats could maybe be built here. Some people who were with me on the tour think that its inevitable if you dug up this ground there would be plenty of archeology here. For some reason the Armenians would rather let the ground go to waste than sell it, or have it landscaped or develop something on it.
King David harp bridge
This is the King David Harp bridge, which is almost finished.
When I say its almost finished, the bridge carries the lightrail train which is very behind schedule. The structure of the bridge is all fine, just the rails and the overhead electric system is not operational. You can see that the trains curve around this house on the right then up over another busy main road.
I was past here the other day as I was with a colleague dropping of food packages to some needy local people in apartments around the corner from here, mostly elderly holocaust survivors.
Its a unique and interesting idea. I am wondering if the wires have to be tightened or adjusted sometimes. Who remembers the problems with the wire bridge that goes across the Thames in London? 🙂
More interesting information on this modern Jerusalem monument here.
This week Rosh HaShana, happy 5771!
Rosh HaShana is a festival celebrating Jewish New Year and gives us 2 1/2 days off work, hooray!
I went to a Messianic congregation (a synagogue with Jews that believe in Jesus) with some friends. The service is in Hebrew, so I didn’t understand much as I know about 15-20 words but its nice to see the Shofar being blown and join in with the worship (well hum along at least 🙂 ) and chat to some of regular people there.
The next day, on the way out to town, I decided to do some fruit picking. Grabbing some Pomegranates. There is some in a row of trees between the two lanes of traffic in a main road near my house. These ones in a outskirts of a car park near the Zion Hotel.
The fruits I got were nothing special, they were quite small and not that sweet. There were some bigger, more red pomegranates on the other bushes but most of them were rotten.
I think all the pomegranates I see in the UK for sale in say, Tesco are all imported from from Israel and cost about 1.50 each.
Near the abandoned railway station there is a path that goes between roads, its marked up Bible Hill.
At the top of the hill looking back onto the abandoned station, there are some ruins of a house there. There is a couple of houses, one of them as lots of junk outside including this wrecked car which looks like an early 1980s Alfa Romeo. Strange place to find it, as I don’t think a working car could easily get up this steep hill.
I went to the Kotel with my friend Donald from Scotland as its his last day before he goes home. We took a shortcut through the Damascus gate, as it then around 8pm, its incredibly quiet around the old city as it is both Jewish New Year and also the end of Muslim festival of Ramadan. From the picture you can see the strings of lights here for Ramadan, not many places are open and its quiet.
The Kotel (Western Wall) is fairly busy as well there.
Lastly, this poster seen in the Arab quarter was quite interesting on the way home. Issa is Arabic for Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) I think its quite common and doesn’t have much significance to most Arabs though.
Brit In Jerusalem 