Sights, Sounds, Aromas During a 1 Hour 23 Minute Walk

On Thursday morning, Feb. 6, after my job prepping & serving breakfast for several tables, and Mike’s job drying & putting away dishes, Mike suggested we go for a walk before lunch, because we finally had sunny, warmer weather. Here are our multisensory experiences during the next 1 hour and 23 minutes — less time than it takes me to run errands in Salisbury! Our walk took us through the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish quarters. (Quarters just meaning sections, not literally 1/4. The other section is the Armenian Quarter.) FYI, Ecce Homo is in the Muslim Quarter.

9:55 a.m. As soon as we stepped out of Ecce Homo, here was this procession of pilgrims singing, a relatively common worshipful occurrence on the Via Dolorosa.

9:56 Man carrying a cross & drinking coffee. Note the little burgundy-colored truck in the background. This is how things are delivered in the Old City. When you hear a vehicle like this or a motorcycle, etc., behind you, if you don’t walk (or jump!) to the edge of the road, it will beep at you. Not a rude honk, more like the beep beep of a golf cart-like vehicle in an airport for people and luggage.

10:05 Franciscan friars near Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

Also about 10:05 Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the sunlight. According to Christian tradition since at least the 4th century, this is the site of both Calvary and the empty tomb.

10:09 A neighborhood bakery where these pitas, straight out of the oven, smelled fabulous. Other aromas as we walked through markets included spices, freshly ground coffee beans, rotisserie chickens, and incense burning at shops selling it.

10:14 a.m. Inside the gorgeous Greek Catholic Patriarchate church, with even the ceiling painted, sort of like the Sistine Chapel

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem

Jesus’ baptism and the Last Supper

10:37 Outside the Jaffa Gate, a guitarist playing “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” The windmill at the end of the video is called the Montefiore Windmill.

10:52 King David’s tomb        (Wikipedia says this “is a site considered by some to be the burial place of David, King of Israel, according to a tradition beginning in the 12th century. The majority of historians and archaeologists do not consider the site to be the actual resting place of King David.)

10:57 Zion Gate, leading into the Jewish Quarter. Bullet holes are from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In Israel, this is known as the War of Independence. In Palestine, it’s known as the Nakba (Arabic for Catastrophe).

10:58 Selfie at Zion Gate

11:04 Men in the Jewish Quarter exuberantly celebrating something — a bar mitzvah? — by dancing the hora.

11:08 This backdrop is in the Cardo (name for main street in ancient Roman Empire cities) in the Jewish Quarter. A guide from Argentina took this pic for us.

11:18 Pilgrim group carrying cross on the Via Dolorosa as we got back “home” to Ecce Homo.

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