Day 2: Now I officially feel like a tourist

First things first, the corresponding link from Tianna's blog: (click here!)

My first full day happened to fall upon a Friday. Things operate a little different in Israel. How to best explain this? Let me try it this way...If you are Muslim then Thursday is such a special day, its the day to get ready for Friday. If you are Jewish as soon as the Muslim holy day ends then yours begins. And after all that is said and done you have a 'normal' Sunday for all the Christians. Half the week ends up being a holy day in one part of town or the other. You end up really having to know your neighborhoods to know when and where you can be there and do stuff. Also when you should not be there.

Friday proved to be problematic because after two months of being in the Jerusalem center Tianna had become well trained in their rules. One of which was not entering the old city on Fridays. We found a nice work around for this since we already were living in the old city we didn't have much of a choice. It still made us apprehensive to venture outside of our hospice. My first pictures of the day ended up being from the safe confines of the Ecce Homo Hospice. Which is not a bad spot actually. It allowed for great overviews of the city, it even allowed us to look onto the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock during call to prayer on the Muslim holy day. Now that is something I wasn't planning on being able to see.

We did discover that our hospice actually covered a historical section all of its own. In the basement is believed to be original stones from Antonia Fortress where Christ was condemned by the people to Pilot. This is also were Tianna met her first boyfriend. (read her blog) 'Ecce Homo' translates as 'here is the man' the words that Pilot uttered as he presented Christ. A part of the Ecce Homo arch is still visible along the Via Dolorosa and a smaller portion of the arch is located within the chapel.

After a while caution gave way to cabin fever and we ventured out of our hospice. Plus the city had seemed to slow way down, church appeared to be over. We would basically spend the rest of the day walking the Via Dolorosa and visiting the stations of the cross. This is the 'traditional' site that Christ would have carried his cross until he reached Golgatha. We started out at the Lions Gate which happened to be quite a beast on this particular day. Imagine trying to leave the parking lot after a BYU football game and you would have a pretty good idea of the madness. (I guess you could look at the picture too. Either or.) The next few pictures will be from the second station which commemorates where Jesus takes up his cross after his flagellation and coronation of thorns and is found in front of the Monastery of the Flagellation. The first is an image of a game scratched into stone. Perhaps similar to the location mentioned in the scriptures where the Roman soldiers played games for Christ's clothes.






These next two images were taken from station one, which is now the location of a Muslim elementary school. This first image was a nice view from a classroom window over the temple mount. This was the best view of the Dome of the Rock I had seen yet. Since it was Friday it would explain why nobody was at the school but luckily the doors were open. They also had this really cool basketball hoop which I have always had a soft spot for . (This probably traces back to practicing basketball on the remains of an old shed surrounded by corrals full of cows or on the hoop mounted to one of my grandmas trees which were unique more than cool but thats beside the point). This one qualified as a cool looking hoop. I so wished I had a ball to shoot around for a few minutes, call me crazy since most everyone else visiting Jerusalem was kissing and crying over rocks, but that would have been a good memory for me. The third picture was of nothing significant I just love how they jimmy rig the streets to try and accommodate vehicles. Classic.


By getting such a late start most of the stations along the Via Dolorosa were closed so I will show those later. We ended up spending a lot of time within the Church of the Holy Sepulcre. This is not a traditional church in fact I heard it described once as a warehouse of churches. This makes sense due to it being divided between the Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Oriental Orthodox Christians. You will even find multiple chapels side by side commemorating the same event but by the different denominations. It is the traditional* sight of Golgatha, where Jesus is stripped of his clothes, nailed to the cross, dies, and is taken down from the cross. Also you can find the Holy Seplucre which is the traditional* tomb of Joseph of Arimathea where Christ was laid to rest. (*Whenever I say traditional you can translate it as unlikely. I do not intend for that to sound sarcastic. For those that know me well I thought I should clarify.) A fun memory by the Holy Seplucre was watching a Fransiscan Monk playing games on his cell phone. The world has changed hasn't it? It was just to dark where he was sitting to actually take a picture and I do detest flash so, sorry.



This last image is just outside of the Church of the Holy Seplucre and just to the right is where I purchased my leather sandles which I quite love and wear whenever possible.