Tales from the Holy Land: Day 13 - Feeling very touristy

Stephen and I stayed up rather late last night planning our trip, but it was very worth it. We got up early and met in the kitchen for breakfast at 8:15, then headed out. We stopped at an atm on the way to the mall, which also happens to be the central bus terminal in Rehovot. We caught the 435 bus to Jerusalem.

An hour later we emerged in Jerusalem's central bus terminal. How exciting! We found a way out of that place, which also happened to be a mall, to find ourselves on Yaffo/Jaffa street, which happened to be what we were looking for. Stephen and I each confirmed that we were going the correct direction in different ways. He looked at the numbers, which he knew should be decreasing, whereas I looked at the sun. Oh man.

So we walked. Soon we found ourselves at the Machanei Yehudah, a shook (market) that is relatively famous. We of course went in! There were fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and all sorts of clothing and kitchen shops and stalls. I bought two buns, for a shekel each (roughly 33 cents), then Stephen and I both bought some dried fruit. He got dried kiwis, which are his favorite fruit and which turned out to be delicious. I got apricots and golden raisins. After some more wandering we found a kitchen store and each bought a set of silverware, because the stuff we share at the Clore kitchen is sort of gross, to be honest.

After a few turns we ended up back on Yaffo, so we continued. I found a camera store which sold a small device to connect my lens cap to my lens, which was very useful, and we browsed in a few other shops which sold everything from Judaica to scarves to housewares. After a bit more walking, we found another familiar spot: Ben Yehuda Street. This is a very touristy street off Yaffo, to which both of us had been on birthright but which we detoured down anyways. We were half expecting to run into a few birthright groups, but sadly did not.

Back on Yaffo, we soon unexpectedly reached the Jaffa gate. For those of you who have never been, Jerusalem is a relatively sprawling city, but the religious or most historic district, known (creatively) as the Old City, is located within the smaller, walled portion, access to which is restricted to several gates, of which Jaffa is one. The Old City is made up of various areas: the Jewish, Arab, Christian, and Armenian Quarters. The Jaffa gate lets you in by the Armenian Quarter, but as we walked further, into a market, we eventually reached the Cardo (literally, the "heart") which led to the Jewish Quarter. Stephen then got a call from someone he had facebooked late last night; an Israeli who lives in Jerusalem and who will be starting at MIT in the fall.

We walked back out of the Old City to meet him, and then went to lunch at a very yummy Italian place. I had goat cheese and eggplant ravioli, which were delicious. We then walked around in the vicinity of Yaffo street some more before heading back to Evgeny's car. He drove us back to the bus station, where we got some cold drinks and then waited for the bus. This last bit turned out to be much less boring than we might have hoped. After trying to hold our own in a sweaty, small mob to get on our bus, we were informed as we were about to board that it was full. We thought it was the last one back to Rehovot, which would have been a crisis as Stephen had planned to be back for shabbat services. Luckily another bus pulled up. Unfortunately since we had finally gotten to the front of the mob, we were relegated to the back of this new mob. But after a few minutes we got on, and both of us promptly fell asleep until we reached Rehovot.

We were both feeling really gross and still groggy as we trekked back to campus, but on the way Ben called (!) and we chatted briefly. After eating dinner and showering, I felt much better. Joel and I made a 2-block excursion in the hopes of renting a movie from the machine-thingies, but upon discovering a) the machines were entirely in hebrew and b) there was nothing we really wanted to see, we returned to the dorms and proceeded to watch the end of Lost in Translation and the entire Vanilla Sky on TV for free (and with no risk of accidentally renting porn, which our other movie-watching method wasn't free of). Now bed. Tomorrow promises to be exciting!

Pictures of today...first, Machanei Yehuda...