The city's name may mean "peace" but it has had more wars fought over her than any city in history. Jerusalem is filled with way more history than we could even begin to write about, so we'll keep our posts in line with only the places and sights we experienced throughout our day's journey there.
The first thing we saw before walking into the Old City was The Biblical Restaurant. Gosh. We hated that we couldn't eat there. ;)
Being the photographers that we are (we take pictures of pretty much everything and anything), JD requested that we take a photo of this lovely large ball of steel yarn. The tour group was walking fast so we only got this off-kilter snapshot of the art piece...
And we reach our first point of true significance: King David's Tomb. We actually didn't reach this point until the very end of the tour but saw the sign at the beginning. As it was Shabbat, we were not allowed to take photos of any holy landmarks so you won't be seeing any photos of the tomb on this blog.
The best description we could give of the tomb is: massive and royal.
Because of the strict cultural divide between men and women in Israel, we were not allowed to enter the tomb together. The tomb was separated in half by a cloth curtain. On the women's side, females were crying while reading from books aloud and swaying as they recited words in Hebrew. King David's Tomb is the second most holy site to the Jewish people, second only to the Wailing Wall (we'll discuss this in a few days).
We've read that he is not buried here since scripture indicates he was buried in the city of David (1 Kings 2:10). However, this site marks his burial and has done so since about 1173 A.D.
Quick Overview.... The Old City is divided into four quarters: Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim. People reside in the quarters just like they would a regular small town. Many years ago, the government would actually pay people to live there just so they could fill the space. Now the cost of living there is pretty expensive.
