A couple days ago we met a friend's daughter outside King David Citadel or also known as The Tower of David Museum which includes the Citadel.
It is intriguing and fascinating from the outside, so today, on our day off, Anna-Lee and I decided to venture in.
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| If it is this magnificent on the outside, what is on the inside? |
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| Inside the courtyard of the citadel, now made into a museum of the history of Jerusalem dating back 3,000 years. |
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| Giving us a map and a "phone" with a prerecorded self guided tour programmed in English,, Anna-Lee read the map to direct us to the 36 every-which-way stations. Each staion was a history lesson of a particular time period. |
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| I thought I'd done most of the stairs we'd have to do this trip. But no, we decided to climb every stair possible to the highest point in one of the towers - station 4. Here we looked over a 360 degree panorama of Jerusalem. This photo shows the Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock and the inside walls of Old Jerusalem. |
Inside the walls of the citadel are rooms with the history of Jerusalem in all the different time periods - Ottoman, Byzantine etc.
This is one place I would enjoy returning to as we only got about 15% of it done.
It helped me use up my remaining shekels however, as we prepared to depart to the airmport and begin the long route home
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| Waiting at our guest house patio for our bus to take us to the airport |
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| Saying goodbye to one of the four feral cats in our guesthouse as it waits to sneak into the dining room. |
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| Waiting with our team at Ben Gurion airport - Tel Aviv for our 1 a.m. 12 hour flight. Linda was selected as the sacrificial lamb to represent our team for security purposes by the security supervisor. Glad I paid attention to names as I was quizzed on the name of our tour guide and bus driver, where we'd stayed, what we did, how many on the team, what was our connection to one another, where were the other people from, if anyone else joined the team during our tour... |
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There were around ten stations to security. Just when we thought we were through, we had another one! Other questions I was asked were if I had an Israeli passport, if I was a part of a Jewish organization, how did I know the tour leader and if he was part of a Jewish organization, why did I want to go on the tour, and why now?
An incredible experience from beginning to end.
For others reading this, I was the tour leader (as opposed to the tour guide). As the leader, I was the first to be interviewed by Israeli security. I was there when the same security person picked Linda out of our group of 15. I thought to myself "interesting, they picked the visually impaired person." I may be over dramatizing, but seeing Linda taken away from Anna Lee struck me, since the were more or less glued together for two weeks. I had to move on, so Linda was completely on her own during the security interview and while we interacted a bit during the flight, this is the first I am learning about what happened. During our trip I had already mentioned to Linda that I thought that she, in spite of (or perhaps because of) her impairment, was seeing more than any other tour participant, which indeed made her the best person for the security interview. This also provided her with additional insight to life in Israel. Yes, Ben Gurion Airport is the most secure airport in the world, but it's also the safest. As a result of much pressure, they have much to teach the rest of the world. But you have to see it for yourself (an unintentional plug for next year's tour). With all this talk about security, you'd be surprised to see how beautiful that airport is, as is the whole country. I better stop now except to say how proud I am of Linda and Annie Lee for making this trip and for how much heart, mind, and strength they invested to get the most out of it. What a privilege it was to lead this group!
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