Hezekiah's Tunnel is awesome! It was dug underneath the walls of the city to bring water in so the people could stay inside the protection during the Assyrian siege. And it worked! Walking through the tunnel was a good activity. We convinced the whole group to turn off their flashlights and we walked through in the dark with one hand above our heads to feel for low ceilings and one hand on the wall to feel for turns. There is still water running through the bottom of it, so my pants are wet, not multi-colored.
I just like grafitti. It's inexplicable.
This is the view of the Old City walls and the Dome of the Rock hiding behind a bush on Mt. Zion.
Oskar Shindler's grave. People put rocks on graves instead of flowers here, so obviously lots of people like Shindler in these parts and with good reason. Go research his life, he's a pretty amazing guy. Here, I made it easy for you. Just click and read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler.
This is the Upper Room... kind of. It's obviously a different building now, but this is likely the same airspace where Christ held the last supper with His Apostles, instituted the sacrament, sang a hymn and then left for Gethsemane. It's incredible to take the sacrament here looking out the windows to this place where it was introduced by the Savior, or looking down the hill to Gethsemane or across to the Garden Tomb. This is a singular experience and I'm loving it!
I love Mt. Zion! This is just outside of Dormition Abbey where Mary is supposedly burried. I have a hard time buying that, which is why you just got a picture of the lightpole instead of her tomb. It is definitely a lightpole; there is little doubt about that. But I'm not sure if it's actually Mary's tomb and I don't want to be putting false things on here.
This is likely the saddest we have ever been. It was such a hot day and we walked so much, up so many hills. The saying "The only direction in Jerusalem is up" is very true and we learned it well. We needed some kind of relief. So Mary Kate, Marie, Camille and I decided to go to the Regency Hotel to go swimming. We were just walking out to the pool when we were stopped and told that we had to pay 60 shekels because we weren't hotel guests. 60 SHEKELS?! NO WAY! That's about $15 for 1 hour of swimming, but oh it looked so nice. All the people by the pool looked so happy wearing their party hats, and we were slumped over with the non-swimmers, and we were depressed. We just laid on these couches for 20 minutes or so trying to decide what to do, hoping that some nice person would see how sad we were and pay for us to swim. But alas, no such person came....
So we made our own happiness. We walked up to the lobby, and I spotted the fountain. We sat on the edge with our hands in the water, and it felt so nice. I started splashing the water up on my arms a bit, while trying not to attract the attention of the receptionist lady at the desk right in front of us or the security guards at the door. Then Mary Kate said what we were all thinking: "We should dunk our heads." Once it had been said out loud, there was no turning back. We debated for about a minute- long enough to realize that it was an excellent idea, then we counted to 3 and dunked our heads in the lobby fountain. Then we stood up and walked out, dripping water behind us. No one said anything or even seemed to notice us- weird. We felt so triumphant, obviously.
Just in case the happiness was not evident from the other picture, here's a close up of our joy.
And we took pictures on their statue. If we didn't get in trouble for putting our heads in the fountain, we figured this was fine.
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