Shabbat Shalom

We really did have a restful start to Shabbat. After a very long day yesterday which ended at nearly 3am today, we both slept in - Loss more so than me as I had to wake her at 11am.

Being Shabbat, things were very quiet anyway. While Loss was still sleeping I went in search of a mini market to buy some milk. There are several near us but none were open, so a ‘long black’ it was :)
We eventually made our way down Ben Yehuda Street and found that our favourite non-Kosher restaurant (Zuni) was open so we indulged in a real lunch. Fortified by this and feeling much refreshed after our sleep, we kept walking to the Jaffa Gate via the Mamilla centre. Our one and only plan was to do The Tower of David / Kishle museum which was surprisingly open on Shabbat - I had seen this online before coming.
Being a bit obssessed with Herod the Great and his building works, I was pretty keen to see this.
It’s a brand new excavation and exhibition and I was particularly interested to see the excavated base of the Phasael tower which is part of Herod’s palace complex right by the Jaffa gate and has just recently been opened to the public.
On the way down Hillel street we noted that there is also a new, large museum where we remembered a construction site last time we were here. We saw it was named ‘The Museum of Tolerance’ as we approached it and weren’t quite sure what that meant. However, in the forecourt area is a display of all the Jewish Nobel Prize winners and a brief description of their field of expertise.
This is exactly what Darren Tappouras was speaking of at the combined day on 14 May (which we had streamed while travelling in the UK) and I have included a video of it.

Continuing on, its always a thrill to enter the Old City and we immediately found the entrance to the Kishle display just around to the right of the Jaffa gate. The audiovisual displays and artefacts are really excellent and we spent a long time going through these, As there was no signage to the contrary and the staff were unconcerned, we photographed and videoed each one. We then moved outside to the courtyard area (just adjacent to where the night time sound and light shows take place) and found all the relevant excavated walls from Herod’s Palace.
Eventually we were being chased out by the staff as we had stayed beyond closing time but there is still more to see! Our friendly guy on the Jaffa gate exit said he would let us sneak back in tomorrow to finish this off without having to pay for another entrance fee - as long as he was on duty. We shall see.

It was then time for a bit of a wander down through the Arab markets; up onto the roof of the markets where all four quarters of the old city can be seen; Western Wall Plaza, which was just starting to come to life as Shabbat was drawing to a close; a bit of a wander around the Jewish Quarter and then back towards the new city still in search of a super (or mini) market that was open. We found one - but they had already sold out of milk.
No ingredients for self catering tonight, so its off to the YMCA restaurant (opposite the King David hotel) for dinner which we had enjoyed last time when we had stayed there.
Alas, we arrived at 8.10pm and the kitchen had just closed so we decided we would head down to the Mamilla Centre to find somewhere to eat.
This plan changed again when we spied the Supermarket across the road had now opened, so we bought some overpriced ingredients for dinner and returned to the apartment.

Our restful start to Shabbat ended up being quite busy with about 13km of walking which is probably pretty standard for a day in Jerusalem.Read more