Jerusalem of Gold

Yikes! Time has slipped away and it has been some time since I posted here. I hope you all still remember me! Our Passover holiday was as hectic, fun and time consuming as I expected and we have had a wonderful family week together. It was one of those holidays when everything we did was simply great! The Seder was a lot of work but 'alright on the night' and the week that followed, Chol Hamoed (weekdays of the festival), allowed us the time to relax and enjoy ourselves after all the preparations.
I'll let the photos speak for themselves. Please sit back and enjoy my latest 'tour' around some great sights of Israel!

We spent two separate days in Jerusalem, our first day in the modern 'new' city, visiting friends on holiday here from the UK, and then another day was spent first abseiling down the cliffs of Gei Ben-Hinnom (Valley of the son of Hinnom) - well, my daredevil sons did the abseiling, not me - and then we walked into the Old City. As we wandered along we realised that it was in fact Good Friday so, rather than heading directly into the Jewish Quarter as we had planned, we decided to follow the crowds (and goodness, do I mean crowds!) down the shuk (the Arab market) into the Christian Quarter, to do a little people watching at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
It was truly fascinating watching the devout men and women carrying huge wooden crosses towards the church and it was just as interesting visiting the Kotel, the Western Wall in the Jewish Quarter, a place where I could truly stand and stare all day. Prayers were popped into the wall (let's see if the right footie team wins this weekend!) and all agreed that it had been a thoroughly good day!

Further day trips saw us visiting the beautiful city of Jaffa and a stunning flower festival in Ra'anana. I promise to show you pictures in my next post. In the meantime I am going to sign off from this post with a photo taken in the Wohl Rose Garden in Jerusalem (below). On Chol Hamoed many members of the religious community wear their best clothes - Shabbat clothes - during the entire week in honour of the holiday. The Rose Garden, situated in West Jerusalem, was obviously a popular location for many religious families and crowds of them were there when we visited, picnicking and playing ball games in their fineries. My husband spotted this tree guard being used as a clothes rack for an Orthodox Jewish man's black hat and jacket, right in the middle of the park, and I was delighted to get a shot of it.