Jerusalem

8 October 2012
I am sitting at a cafe in the Old City just inside the Damascus Gate.
It's Sukkot and being a Jewish holiday no buses, well no Jewish buses to the Dead Sea are running so we have an extra day to chill. This cafe is the only one in the whole old city that we have found that serves alcohol, so we are enjoying a bottle of 2008 Gamla Cabernet Sauvignon from the Golan Heights and watching the world go by. To our right and less than 3 metres from me are 4 Israeli soldiers in full battle kit touting automatic weapons, some with sub machine guns. Most of them look under 20 years old. They are rather bored and spend most of their time on their cell phones. All the shop keepers and fruit sellers are Arabs and so are all the customers, mostly women in long dark coats with coloured headscarves. The younger girls wear jeans and long tops but hardly any of them show their hair. Young Arab men have a uniform of trainers jeans and t-shirts and smell of cheap aftershave .  They spend a lot of time in the barbers' shops, getting just-so haircuts involving at least 3 different lengths of clipper and loads of gel. A steady stream of Orthodox Jews pass by on their way to the Western Wall to pray. They don't dawdle around here at all, as if they would rather not mix with the riff-raff, but have no other choice if they want to get to the Holiest of Places. Some read the Torah as they walk . Mostly dressed all in black, suits or silky long coats that look like dressing gowns, they have ringlets of hair on either side of the face and knotted strings dangling from their waists. Some just wear yamulkahs, but others have black top hats or round fur hats perched on top of their heads. They rush by to the sound of the Islamic Messuin calling the Moslems to prayer. The Christian locals are less common.  Nuns, Francician monks in brown friars habits and Greek or Russian Orthodox priests with beards and black robes. The groups of Christian pilgrims don't tend to come this way or use this gate much. They stick to the route through the old city called the Via Dolorosa; the route Jesus is believed to have taken carrying the cross up to Calvary ;now the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulche. They are in groups, many singing or praying as they make the journey. There are groups from all the Western European countries with their comfortable walking shoes and cameras but there are a far greater number of Asian Christian groups from countries like the Phillipines, India and South Korea. The Eastern Euroeans from places like Russia and all the Stans, have come in their Sunday Best and battle along the crowded cobblestone paths in high heels, carrying glitzy handbags. The African pilgrims wear brightly coloured robes depicting biblical scenes or fake priests robes. Some pilgrims carry big wooden crosses, which can be hired for the day.
 It's a truely amazing place; the meeting point and holiest of sites for the 3 great Monotheistic Religions of the World. Jerusalem should be a place of peace and tolerance and mutual respect for the fellow human beings we meet. The respective religions teach this, but sadly this is not the case. I have only been in Jerusalem 4 days, so what do I really know about it ? The keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulche are held by a Muslim family to stop in-fighting amongst the Christian Denominations claiming rights to it. Muslims and Jews don't live in the same suburbs or even ride on the same buses if they can help it. It's a public holiday today for Jews and the Jewish busses are not running but the Muslim busses are, and the Muslim kids had school today. We saw man with a yamulkah spit at the feet of a Christian priest outside the tomb of David and groups of Muslim school kids scream deliberately outside churches where services are taking place.
And then there's the military presence everywhere and the wall and check points, which send a clear message. And the fact that Jews and Christians can't enter the Temple Mount. It seems sadly like a situation without a solution. And yet somehow we love it, with all the chaos and litter and diversity. There's no place like this anywhere in the World, so I am going back to my wine and my view of life passing by.

Israel and Jordan

We have always wanted to visit Israel, and finally we went for 2 weeks in early October. The weather at this time of year is marvellous – still very hot during the but cool enough at night to sleep without aircon – and no rain at all. We spent 5 nights in Jerusalem and surrounds and also visited Bethlehem in Palestine for a day trip. We hired a car to drive right up to Acre on the Med Coast and then across to the Golan Heights. From here we spent time at the Sea of Galilee and then travelled south to the Dead Sea. We visited many Christian sites all over Israel, most of which are commemorated with a church built on the so- called original site of the nativity, sermon on the mount, calvary etc. Some of these churches are very old and amazingly beautiful but some are fairly new and often detract from the original story. It’s easier to imagine Jesus preaching to the disciples on the hillside over the Sea of Galilee when you look out over the sea from the car park than by entering the plain newly built church at the site. We drove all the way south through the desert to Eilat on the Red Sea. It’s a modern beach resort squeezed into the 11kms of Red Sea shoreline owned by Israel, with Jordan at one end and Egypt at the other. From here we were able to do a long day trip to Petra in Jordan, to see the amazing city that was carved out of the rock a few thousand years ago. The highlight is the Treasury Building which is amazingly well preserved but the site is really extensive and you can walk and climb for hours and hours. The border crossings were rather tedious but the trip was worth it. We also spent a number of days in Tel Aviv and really liked it. We stayed in a small boutique hotel on the beach front and were very pleasantly surprised by the beaches which were far better than anything in Eilat. Tel Aviv has a real café culture and there must be more coffee shops per capita there than anywhere else in the world. There is always time to stop and have a coffee! We ate at some good restaurants and really liked Jaffa – the old market and the new harbourside shops and restaurants. The Art Museum in Tel Aviv is world class and has an amazing 19^th and 20^th century collection. Israeli food is wonderful, especially the starters, which are vegetarian and brought to the table as lots of small portions of hummus, falafel, bread, pickles and salads as soon as you sit down. Main courses are usually fish or lamb and often cooked on coals. Local wines are quite expensive, especially for something good but go down well with all the outdoor eating.

British Autumn

We missed Oktoberfest this year and flew back to London on 14 September. Thanks to the kind hospitality of the London Greenfields, we were settled into our attic suite in no time. This comes with one downside , a daily pre-6am wake up call by James ! Followed a while later by William. Neil is usually dispatched downstairs at this time but Gail has done the worst of shifts, after only getting to bed after 1am. You try teaching 2 six year olds how to play Chinese Checkers at 5.40am after 4 hours sleep! And making sure you win and they finish within a turn of each other so that no serious fighting ensues. We have seen some great West End theatre and taken advantage of the great lunch deals offered by top Michelin starred restaurants . After a great night out with Greg and Sarah, we made the last train home, but they had to check into a hotel! We enjoyed wondering around Londons' varied neighbourhoods like Soho and Camden and catching up with friends. The only problem is that we never seem to have enough time for everything and everyone! How did we fit anything in when we worked as well? We enjoyed overnight stays with Antoinette, Greg and Sarah, Mylene and Conrad, and Nick and Kerry. Too much wine was definitely consumed! Neil's new obsession is train journeys, so we caught a train from Cardiff to Pwheli and back the next day. The coastal journey is beautiful but there are not many reasons  to go to Pwheli. It's a Welsh-speaking holiday resort on the far North West Welsh coast and in late September was already closed up for the winter.