After visiting Cyprus, I went to Israel. This trip was at the invitation of Amnon Lotem, a recent Ph.D. graduate of mine. Amnon was very helpful during my visit. Among other things, he arranged for me to take a one-day bus tour of Jerusalem. Here are my pictures from that tour.

Each image is a "thumbnail" - click on it to see the full-sized image.

	Jerusalem as seen from Mount Scopus.		This was also at Mount Scopus. These people were trying to make money by getting tourists to ride on the camel.
	The "Tower of David." I'm not sure why it has that name, as it doesn't seem to have anything to do with David.		Part of the Jewish Quarter in the old city.
	Part of the Jewish Quarter in the old city.		Pillars along the ancient Roman road. We're below ground here; this was discovered during an excavation operation being done to renovate the Jewish Quarter. A few blocks from here, there's a portion of the original wall of Jerusalem (I should have taken a picture, but didn't).
	The Western Wall.		Near the Western Wall.
	Security precautions at the Western Wall.		One of the soldiers guarding the Western Wall. Military service is compulsory in Israel.
	People at the Western Wall. Notice the ledge in the lower right-hand quadrant of the image. The part of the wall to the left of this ledge is for men only, and the part of the wall to the right of the ledge is for women only.		Here's one source of conflict between Jews and Arabs. The golden dome, a mosque, is one of Islam's holiest sites: they believe Mohammed ascended to heaven there. The hill on which the mosque is located is also one of Judaism's holiest sites: it's where their first and second temples stood, and where they believe their third temple will someday stand.
	The minaret associated with the mosque. Note the fence separating it from the Western wall.		Thursday is Bar Mitzvah day at the Western wall. This young man is celebrating his Bar Mitzvah, and is being carried out on the shoulders of his friends.
	Worshipers and tourists at the Western wall.		Here's the women-only part of the wall. I naively wandered in here with my camera, and one of them yelled at me to go away.
	A street in the Armenian Quarter of the old city, just off the Via Dolorosa.		Two women on the Via Dolorosa.
	The Armenian Catholic patriarchate.		I hadn't expected to see this in Israel! In Virginia near where Janet used to live, there's a restaurant that has a sign saying "broasted chicken" - Janet always thought it was a misprint, but it turns out it's a brand name of a company that started somewhere in the midwestern US.
	Calvary.		Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
	Becca and Heather are two young women whom I met on the tour. We ended up having dinner together at an outdoor cafe near Zion Square. Becca lived for several years in the DC area, and her wedding ceremony was performed by someone I know -- Inge Hill, from the Washington Ethical Society.		Becca and Heather were in Israel as part of a very adventurous four-month trip. Before visiting Israel they had been in one of the ex-USSR countries -- Tajikistan, I think -- and after Israel, they were planning to go to India and Nepal.

This page created on a Macintosh using PhotoPage .

Notes:

In the morning, I had to walk from my hotel to another hotel, to wait for a bus to pick me up to take me to where the tour would begin. About half-way to the other hotel, a one-block section of road near Zion Square was completely blocked off by people in military uniforms, and civilians were standing around watching. After watching for a minute or so, I went up to a woman in uniform and asked her what was going on. She said, "They have found an object which they think might be a bomb. However, don't worry about it, this happens all the time." I walked away and came back a few minutes later, and everything was back to normal.

On the bus that took me to where the bus tour started, there was a British woman, probably in her 50s, who was on her way to another tour that started from the same place. She said she had come to Israel from England on the back of a motor bike. As part of that trip, she had had to take a ferry out of Greece, and she had been on that ferry at the same time that the Greek ferry disaster occurred. Now she was in Israel while the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was going on. She said her children had called her from England saying, "Mother, why are you doing this to us?"