Last day in the middle east!

Tonight marks the last day of my time in the middle east. To make travelling easier tomorrow me and Stephen have come back to Jerusalem. It was fairly easy to get to Jerusalem from Nablus. We took various services and taxis and then crossed the border by foot. That was a new experience for me but it was pain free :D Once the other side of the checkpoint we got on a bus to Damascus Gate.

Damascus gate at about 1pm

After photographing the gate we walked to the hostel as the tram was not free anymore :(. It was a lovely walk very hot though! I did have to stop a few times as I was carrying everything in my hiking bag which was not easy in the heat!
After checking into the hostel we went for a walk around the Old City. Due to it being the Sabbath after sundown today we did the Western Wall/Wailing Wall first. I walked to the women's side of the wall and wrote out a prayer and stuck it in the wall.

Women's side of the wall

We walked through the different quarters, the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter and the Muslim Quarter. We walked around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The tower of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

I got to see the stone where Jesus' body was annointed before burial, where Jesus was crucified and where he was buried. As we walked around, we got to see the different chapels of the different denominations, including Catholic, Ethiopian Orthodox and Greek.

I also saw Helen's Cistern, a large well next to the church. I had to duck and crawl through arches and corridors to get there.

A blurry picture of Helen's Cistern

Afterwards, we carried on walking through the Old City, and left it through Damascus Gate just as dusk was falling and the call to prayer started.

Jerusalem at night

We then went to dinner and came back to update my blog. A very exciting week was had!