J o u r n e y s: Jerusalem

I failed Jerusalem. I fully admit that. I had planned to have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and part of Saturday in the city. Howevever, I was so thrown off by the Hebrew in Tel Aviv (yes people spoke English, but little was written in Latin characters) that I decided to take a tour that would drop me in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Then I booked a tour on Thursday that included the Temple Mount and Old City. I expected to have Friday to visit the museums and then Saturday I'd head to Amman via the Sheik Hussein border crossing.

So the tour took all day Wednesday, in Nazareth and Galilee. Then on Thursday, the tour was super crowded. They had to add a second group. And will all of that commotion, and confusion, we got in line for the Temple Mount at about 12:30... and didn't get in. Two hours to move about 100 yards up the road, standing in the blazing sun, all wasted time. Apparently there was a group in front of us who didn't know the security regulations and took a long time to search. Either way, I was heartbroken. The Temple Mount is closed on Friday and Saturday. I'd lost my chance to see the Dome of the Rock, and wasted most of my day on a tour that I could have done on my own much faster and cheaper. The only upside is that I met some great people in the group. We had drinks after and then I went to the cool food markets by the hostel for dinner with one of the other travellers. The guide was really sweet and tried to make up for it by showing us other sites, like Mt Zion and an overlook so we could at least see the Dome. I'm still bitter about this weeks later.

As for the next day... transit in Israel shuts down midday on Friday until sunset on Saturday. which meant no getting to Amman on Saturday from Jerusalem. The only solution I could find was a bus from Nazareth on Saturday morning at 8:30, which meant I needed to be in Nazareth on Friday night. There was only one bus, at 12:45. So in the morning, I checked out of the hostel in Jerusalem and went to the bus station, to get my ticket to ensure I was on it!

The whole thing was just sort of a bust all around. In the end I had one day in the city and didn't get to see many of the sites. I'm sure I'll be over the disappointment someday enough to go back and see the rest, but right now it's just a bitter pill that I failed so spectacularly at scheduling that I missed so much of this important historical city.