Today (Sunday 19 June) we have finished the tour and can run to our own timetable, or should that be crawl - we slept in and decided to do only one thing. After a leisurely breakfast we caught a taxi to the Jaffa Gate in the old town. We had been told to allow 50 dhekels but Inoted that the meter said 41 shekels. More on this later.
Gillian had had to miss the old city while on the tour as she would not have been able to keep up with the group without severe stress to her chesy. Now we could saunter down to overlook the Wailing Wall at an easy pace. Unfortunately we had forgotten the dress code for religious sites here and I was in shorts and GHillian had bare shoulders so we did not go right up to the wall. This time there were almost no orthodox Jews by the wall, but there were a number of casually dressed people leaning with their hands aginst the wall.
Moving on we found the location of the citadel where Pilate condemned Jesuss which is station 1 of the cross. Following the Via Doloroso to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we were again prevented from entering due to our dress or lack of it. Again I was impressed by gthe low key way the stations of the cross are marked with metal discs mounted high on the wall. Given that the route is a drawcard for thousands of pilgrims a year and the najoroty of the shops on the route are selling religious memorabilia I expected the route to be overblown.
After approaching a few taxis and being quoted inflated costs to get back to our hotel we grabbed one who was dropping off a fare and got back to the hotel for the standard 50 shekels. The first drivers wanted 70, dropping to 60 when we walked away showing that bargaining and fleecing are alive and well.
After a light lunch we spent the afternoon lazing in and around the swimming pool.
Anyway our transfer picks us up at 3:00am tomorrow so an early night.
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