Day 37 - June 26, 2009

The past three days have been a whirlwind of activities. I spent Wednesday doing almost every major touristy thing possible, which entailed walking in the scorching heat for six hours straight. One of the more interesting sites I saw was the Western Wall tunnels tour, a rather controversial tour because of it's very obvious pro-Israel stance. It was actually quite intriguing, as there is significantly more to the Western Wall than is visible from the outside, and on the tour you can see the entire thing. I also really enjoyed it because normally there is a hefty fee to take the tour and tickets have to be booked in advance, but I found a nice tour guide who helped sneak me in for free! My favourite part of the tour was probably when the guide explained that the Dome of the Rock was built to ensure that Jewish refugees could never return - while that is probably somewhat true, the lack of the explanation that the Dome and the mosque beside it are two of the holiest sites in Islam was rather bothersome.
Thursday brought one of my favourite times of year - Pride! Pride in Jerusalem is usually a point of contention in the city because of the conservative nature of many of the Jewish citizens, however we were met with very few protesters. This was in part due to the very heavy police presence that sectioned off the protesters to an area which was not in our view - it was really nice to be protected by police instead of monitored by them for once! Elias (pictured left, and I'm not quite sure what he's doing but as always he looks cute) is part of a samba band that let me play with them, and I picked it up quite quickly! My female friend Iah, who wears a kippa, was there with her girlfriend Caroline and they were pretty much mobbed by photographers. All in all it was a really great day.

And today was my second and probable final shabbat in Jerusalem. Before shabbat began, however, I was finally able to find a really good bagel place (my first bagel experience here was terrible - it looked like the thing had been run over by a truck, AND they put olives on it - for anyone that knows me, they know that is a big no-no). For shabbat dinner we went to Rebecca's friend Jessica's house in Rehavia for a massive feast with about 15 people. Tomorrow I'm heading to Ramallah to see Naomi Klein, and then off to a few more days of travelling in the West Bank!