Walking The Walled City

At three pounds each the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has to be one of the best deals in modern transportation, particularly when you consider they run on time, and have aircon and WiFi. Takes about 45 minutes.

We went to the Israeli museum first. The cloakroom attendant was like a character from Ben Stiller’s homage to Walter Mitty.

“Hey where you from?”
“London.”
“Hey London England! James Bond”.
“Yes that’s right. Actually I am James Bond”
“Cool. I’m Batman. Give me your bag”.

They have fine dining at the museum, we had a superb Jerusalem Tapas with really nice wine. The dining room was massive and beautifully designed. Set us up nicely for the cultural experience that was to follow.

The Israeli Museum is stunning, a series of incredible spaces with really well curated exhibits. I particularly liked the synagogue interiors that had been rescued from various locations around the world and shipped and re-assembled in Jerusalem. There was even one from India which was a joyous fusion of Indian and Jewish culture. Lots of clothes and jewellery including some very chunky bling rings.

But the star attraction is the Dead Sea Scrolls, located in a building which is in itself full of architectural merit and which leads you carefully down through the levels of the experience in a dimly lit but never sombre interior. In fact this is history made ecstatic and the scroll fragments on display are beautiful (ironically) beyond words. I was blown away by this; if you have never been it is a must do, on the bucket list of all bucket lists.

They also have a reconstruction of Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple. This is quite unbelievable. A massive project begun in the 1950s by an obsessive professor of antiquities at the local University. It covers thousands of square metres outside the main museum building.

After that we got a bus into the old city itself and went for a walk around the real thing. Down to the wailing wall and then up through the Souk. Incredibly I had exactly the same experience today as I did seven years ago, a very small Arab boy pointing a toy gun at me and pulling the trigger. Both funny and disturbing at the same time.

I took this shot as we walked up after dark. Excuse the heavy stying but after experimenting I fell in love with this image. Has a touch of The Third Man about it.

We got back to Tel Aviv at 8.45 and found the local vegan restaurant called Anastasia which is about ten minutes from our apartment (four minutes of which are taken in wearily climbing the stairs of our block, as I described yesterday). This is a lovely place with really gorgeous staff although we over-indulged on pasta and paella to the point of having to decline the pudding menu, dammit. I will be back.

This is a very skimpy description of a gorgeous day (again). I love this place. Historical Jerusalem and buzzy Tel Aviv are massive contrasts but both are delightful.

Run out of superlatives now. But they day speaks for itself. Magic.