This morning we walked around part of Jerusalem’s city wall, which was pretty neat and had a great view. We also went down to see towers and walls from the time of David. When the city was built up, many ruins were simply built over, and are underneath houses and hotels, kind of like large basements.
The temple complex was much more exciting. The massive Herodian stones at the corner of the western and southern walls weigh as much as 220 tons – no modern machine can lift that!
My favorite part of the day was the trek through Hezekiah’s tunnel. The walls were only about a foot and a half wide, there was cold water up to my knees, and everyone had to duck or hunch over – except me! – for 700 yards. Not the ideal setting for a claustrophobic, but I had a blast. We sang songs the whole way, everything from “Be Thou My Vision” to “Hakuna Matata.”
Finally, we went to a Holocaust museum, which put kind of a grim capper on our touring for the day.
For supper, I went back to last night’s pizza place, this time with Shannon, Will, and Matt. After we ate, we walked around a bazaar for a little while, then stopped at a bookstore. There we all bought a copy of Green Eggs and Ham in Hebrew!
I’ve spent the last hour and a half reading Poisonwood Bible to Shannon, and we’re about to go to bed.