Jerusalem

Yesterday,I ended up walking to the Central Bus Station. I had woken up very early, and met Dave and had some coffee, we ended up going to the Bus Station, which was somewhat far away, but very easy to find, it was right on the Main Jaffa Street, just had to walk a ways. We stopped at some stores that were cool and I bought a sim card for my phone so my cell phone will work here. I saw so many cool stores I'm going to go back that way tomorrow on the way to Mount Herzl and the Holocaust Museum.

The Bus station was so cool. It was SO modern, I think I was expecting it to be just like a regular run down type bus station but it was awesome it was like a huge mall inside with all types of stores lights, food, everything. It was also very cool to see so many IDF soldiers walking around with each other and eating as well as some where on patrol. It was cool seeing all the IDF woman soldiers as well. Every soldier had powerful machine guns on their backs, yes even the young women. It seemed most of the soldiers were about 18-22 or so. I was able to get my bus ticket for early Tuesday. So I will have one more full day in Jerusalem. After getting the ticket, we headed back outside the old city walls and ended up going to Mount of Olives.

First we stopped at Mary's Tomb, then walked up to the Mount of Olives, went to the Jewish cemetery, taking tons of pictures all the way. After that we headed down to another gate into the old city, we entered and tried to see Dome of the Rock, but they wouldn't let us in. We went through almost all the entrances and they wouldn't let us in. So finally we just forgot about it and went to the Western Wall. The wall was amazing, I wrote down a little prayer and stuck it into the wall. It was so amazing to see this. After this, we went to the Jewish Quarter, probably the nicest quarter in the old city, although I think it is the smallest. The Jews who live in the Old City make up a very tiny amount of the people who live in it, compared to the Muslims and Christians. I stopped at a great Jewish bookstore which had everything Jewish you could ask for. After that we headed told Mt. Zion, went to ta very nice church and were looking for the grave of Oscar Schindler, but we just couldn't find it. We searched for a long time, but found nothing, finally I was very tired and just told Dave I'm going back, he said he was going to keep looking, so we parted ways and I hadn't seen him since, haha.

I went back to the hostel and checked out and moved into the new Jaffa Gate hostel about 2 minutes away still inside the Old City. It is much nicer and I have a room with only 1 other person. A cool dutch guy named Geert, it wasn't Wilders, didn't have the hair. Anyways I will write more about the day I just need to get some coffee and start today.
Love,
Matt