So what did I do with myself on Sunday since it isn't considered the Sabbath? My first stop was at Aladdin's. He is a money changer here in Jerusalem who is very good to the BYU students. It was my first stop there! Can you believe I went a week and a half without money in a foreign country? Aren't you proud dad?
Then we made our way through the city to do the Ramparts Walk. We actually walked on the wall of the Old City! It was pretty cool to learn the history of the wall and to look out over the city. It took us almost two hours and we only did the Southern half of the wall!
This is a little sliver in the wall for archers to shoot their arrows through.
A little to my left is the Jerusalem center. We have a great view of the city and they have a pretty good view of us too.
This is my friend Marianne and me. We got a little bit stuck and everyone left us! Actually, the rest of the group just took off while we were taking some fun pictures. You can't pass up shots like this!
This is one of my many pictures of the Dome of the Rock. I will probably come home with more pictures of it than pictures of people. I should probbaly work on changing that but for some reason my camera just likes to take pictures of it.
Here I am sitting on the wall with, you guessed it, the Dome of the Rock in the background!
After we finished our tour we decided to do some shopping. I had planned on just looking and getting a feel for things I really wanted to buy and what fair prices are blah, blah, blah. Yeah right! I went crazy the very first store we went in! I got:
- 2 dresses (they were only 25 shekels ($7-ish) each!)
- a BYU Jerusalem t-shirt (yeah, they have those here!)
- stacked jewelry boxes (3 in one!)
- a really cool sign that says Shalom Ya'll (I couldn't pass it up!)
So yeah. So much for not buying anything! At the next store I got a pair of earings and a scarf. I knew that things were getting out of hand so I asked my friends to not let me spend any more money. Steve took me seriously and he said "Okay. Give me your money." I hesitated for a second but I knew it was a good idea so I handed it over. Now my dad has another best friend in Jerusalem looking out for my bank account. It really did help though. From then on I had to decide whether it was worth it to ask Steve for my money. And even when I would ask he was really good about making me think about whether or not I really wanted it so it all worked out pretty well! Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of our shopping adventures but I will try to remember to take some in the future.
When we were pretty much done with our shopping we decided to stop by the Western Wall to take some pictures. We actually went there on Friday night but no pictures were allowed because the Jews were welcoming in their Sabbath. There will be more about that later!
This is us at the Western Wall with the Jewish flag behind us.
The day was still young so we decided to go over to West Jerusalem (the nice part of town) and explore a little bit. We found some pretty awesome stuff!
They say that Jerusalem is the navel of the world and this mosaic map does a pretty good job of illustrating that, don't you think?
We also found an amazing gelato shop! It was so yummy!
While we were eating our gelato some Israeli soldier girls asked us to make a human pyramid for a photo scavenger hunt they were doing. It was so much fun! And we had our gelato guarded by one of the girls. Nobodoy was going to mess with our gelato with an M-16 (or whatever those things are called...) looking out for it!
Allison and Marianne thought the gelato boy was really cute so we asked to get a picture with him. They let us come behind the counter and everything! Unfortunately, the wrong guy got in the picture with us!
After that we stopped in a few shops and went to the open air market called the shuk. It was a great day! Jerusalem is so much fun! I love it here!
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