Wandering again

So much to see and so little time.  After spraining my ankle yesterday and being stuck in bed with my leg on ice I needed to make up for lost time.  I was on my own and needed to see something new.  I was walking down the main street in our neighborhood and found the wine store, I then bumped into Avital, my dear friends Rabbis Laurie and Gary's daughter from Portland.  I backtracked with her (schlepping 3 bottle of red wine) and then went back to our apartment to unload  (only 3000 steps).  Now I was really off to adventure!

For me all roads lead back to the old city... but I was determined to find a new way in... I was going to find the Zion Gate and without a map. Where as Paul will use a map... I point and shoot.  I get a direction and aim and will crawl over, under or through private property to get where I want to go.  After moseying through the "Tombs of Herods Family" I saw the road I need to cross to get onto the hill I needed to climb... aren't I fun? The 1st photo is a house (sort of) that I passed climbing up towards my goal.  Past mountains of garbage... this place really needs to learn to take better care of the sacred land they all want.

I saw the back of a church and had to hop a rock fence but a pathway was in view.  Through an open rock wall I walked and I thought I had found a new gate to the old city... I felt like a true explorer!  Not quite, this old building and other structures were special... OK; King David's Tomb, but I was not inside the old city yet... They couldn't put his Tomb inside?  I wandered through and avoided the few people I saw or who offered me a cheap tour...

Next I saw a rather lovely church and just looked a round a bit and asked someone what it was...remember, no map.  That would be the Dormition Abbey Where The Last Supper too place (Coenaclum). Where can you wander in Portland like this? Finally I found the Zion Gate, anticlimactic at this point.

I walked through portions of the Jewish Quarter I hadn't seen before,  the remaining photos were taken there. I love seeing the way trees can survive in just about any condition... the oranges were amazing.  The Jewish man was collecting money for the poor, and the old Arab man was such an interesting character.