So far...

Wow, they really weren't kidding when they advised us to "practice walking." It's not the walking that hurts, it's being on your feet from 8am until 6pm every day, and then again most nights. It's Sunday evening; since arriving on Friday night we have had walking "tours" of the Old City, all the gates, around all the walls, through the surrounding valleys, been in all four quarters (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Armenian), seen different things like the Via Dolorosa, St. Anne's Cathedral (the birthplace of Mary and where the pool from John 5 is located), the probable site of Golgatha (Church of the Holy Sepulchre), the City of David (not in the walled Old City of Jerusalem), Hezekiah's Tunnel, the Siloam Pool, and the Western Wall. Not to mention the lectures and different tour programs and models about Jerusalem through the centuries and how many times it has been conquered and changed hands.

Western Wall

The weather has been great; a little chilly but beautiful, blue skies & sunny. Last night we went to the Western Wall (aka the Wailing Wall) and took a tour of the wall underground (only a small fraction of it is showing; most of it is encompassed by the Muslim quarter, where the Arabs have built their houses into the wall. Beneath what is visible, the wall goes 40 feet down). The largest rock that Herod used was 40 feet long, 10 feet high, and 12 feet deep, weighing 600 tons, and no one knows how they were able to move it there...no equipment that we have in existence today would be able to move it. (Jamie I remember you telling me about this after your trip, it was fun to see it!) :) Tomorrow I think we are hitting the temple mount and some other things in the Jerusalem area before heading out to surrounding areas for day trips until we leave to go south on Saturday.

Kim & I around midnight at the western wall

Here are some pics around town: the Dome of the Rock (which we'll see better tomorrow); some houses in the City of David, which is now an Arab village; a model of the walled city during the 2nd Temple Period (Herod's temple mount; 539 BC - 70 AD); and some candles in St. Anne's Cathedral...

This afternoon we went into Hezekiah's Tunnel. I was expecting it to be a lot colder, but it was fine, and it was kinda fun in there! It was built to bring water into the city from a spring outside the wall. They started chiseling from separate ends, and it gets pretty windy and zigzaggy in the middle; it's a wonder the two crews ever found each other under the mountain! It's over 580 yards and takes about 30-40 minutes to get through. At some points it's shallow water, other times up to your thighs; it's pretty narrow through the whole thing, and you are stooping over in areas, and in other areas the ceiling is really high. Oh, and it's pitch black in there! This is one of the coolest thing we've done so far (in two days!).

Kim getting a little deeper

Some of the ladies in our group after emerging from the tunnel