Jerusalem

My flight from Amsterdam to Jerusalem went smoothly except that I again, got only an hours sleep tops. Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport is pretty beautiful. Immaculate and spacious apart from the occasional smoker it wasn't such a bad place to kill an hours time while I waited for Nora. When she got there we found a shared taxi and went to Jerusalem. We were dropped off at Damascus Gate as the sun was rising (it was 5:30am) and wandering through the old city before anyone was there was a total shock. It's a norrow, enclosed environment when the shops are closed, when they open it gets jammed with people and goods. We found a hotel that was still open and both got rooms. We slept for a couple of hours and then decided to go out and explore. Up to that point I had really not seen as many soldiers as I had expected, but it turns out that it was like that because it was so early. We were in the Muslim quarter of the Old City and we made our way over to where we thought was the Temple Mount and as we turned one of the random corners it suddenly came into view. The greyish roof of the Al-Aqsa Mosque first, then underneath the crowds gathered at the Wailing Wall, then the golden Dome of the Rock.

We wandered around and made it down through the metal detectors to the plaza of the Western Wall. For some reason it wasn't of the proportions that I had expected but it was still impressive, though dwarfed by the Dome of the Rock....