Jerusalem

So Last week was Denys' last week and we did plenty of matches and shooting at the schools which all went great as usual and the kids were very happy to be playing matches and fun things. Wednesday after school we got picked up by Delila who took us to the Town Hall where Esti was and there we were to meet the Mayor of Akko. Once we met him we had a couple of photos taken with all of us together then sat down to have a quick chat about how things are going in Akko and the schools along with our thought of Akko in Israel coaching and in general as a country. Afterwards we made our way (a 2minutes walk across the road) to Mig Dalor, our arabic friendship house. For those that don't know Mig Dalor actually means Lighthouse, at the session we played some matches winner stays on first to 2 goals and we had around 20 children there playing all well behaved.

Thursday was raining so the school was cancelled and because of this we decided to leave earlier for Jerusalem for what would be Denys last weekend in Israel. I threw a few things in a bag whilst Denys had to pack up everything. We got a train from Akko to Tel Aviv where we then had to catch a train to Jerusalem, the train that was supposedly heading to Jerusalem had no signs on board to say where it was going nor was there any English over the speaker and nothing on the platform back at Tel Aviv. I remebered it only stopped at a couple of stations which i thought was weird when checking beforehand on the Internet and remembered the first stop which was Lod so when we got to the first one I was somewhat happy we were going in the right direction. The journey was around one and a half hours from Tel Aviv and most of it was through winding mountains which was why we were wondering if we did get on the right train, lucky enough though we came out of the mountains and saw a town which straight away just happened to be Jerusalem!

Our first night we took a walk from the hotel down past the old city and we stumbled across Mike's Place which you may remember was the American/English type bar which we went to in Tel Aviv and ordered some hot chicken wings had some food/drink and good conversation then headed back to the hotel for some well earned rest.

Friday morning we went on a free tour, yes a free tour of Jerusalem around the old city. For a free tour it was 3 hours long and actually well worth doing. We walked around, saw The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre, Wailing Wall and much much more. We found out that the same tour company have another couple of tours which aren't free. Just a quick mention aswell to say that Jerusalem was like being back in England, cold and forecast to snow on Saturday, thankfully it didn't snow but there was ice on the side of the pavements and on car windscreens, Saturday also saw quite alot of heavy hail stones and very strong, cold winds! Being British I only packed/wore a t-shirt and hoody. In the monring we went to The Tower Of David which we walked all around and also went in the exhibitions along the way. Saturday also saw us go on one of the non free tours from the same tour company which was the Mount Olive tour. You take a taxi ride around 15minutes to the top of the mountain and walk all the way back down stopping at various historic places and viewpoints along the way ending at Mary's Tomb. I won't go into detail about everything we saw and learnt as it was a 3 and a hlf hour walking tour. Sunday we went on another tour from the same company which was called The Holy City tour which goes more in depth then the free tour around the city and actually takes you inside the Church's and hidden places not so easy to find for the average tourist. We went inside the Holy Sepulchre which we did the following day by ourselves but this time it was nice to have explanations of things we were looking at and also went to The Small Wailing Wall plus much more, unfortunatly we couldn't go to the Temple Mount as it only opens for around an hour or 2 a day and today it just so happened there was some kind of riot and it was closed unexpectedly. All 3 tour guides were great and once again I don't want to go into everything we learnt and saw otherwise I could go on forever so I'll let some of the pictures show that and just to let you all know apart from the free tour the other 2 were 75 Shekels each which is around 12 pounds and well worth it as they last for around 4 hours.

Entering my prayer

British Post box from the British Mandate period

                                                          Entrance to The Holy Sepulchre

The Stone of the Anointing

The Altar of the Crucifixion

So after Jerusalem at around 6pm on Sunday we left to go back to Tel Aviv where we stayed one night and the next morning we took the same long walk as before all along the sea front to Old Jaffa, the weather in Tel Aviv was very warm so it was a great walk, however for the first time in Israel I wasn't feeling too good and think we might of ate something dodgy as Denys felt the same way. We left Tel Aviv around 4pm heading our seperate ways, Denys back to the airport and me back to Akko where I have just under 5 weeks remaining.