Saturday 07-06 - Old city markets

Looking at the LP book (I still somehow trust it), most things are closed on Saturday. So we decided to check out the markets in the morning. Loud and, well, kind of like Egypt. Lots of hassling and bartering and the same cheap but overpriced bits in every store. Filled with -dont worry be Jewish- and George Bush as a religious Jew t-shirts. Fake silver Magen Davids. Smoking pipes and -ancient- jars. Etc.



Further down and to the left it becomes the Muslim quarter market which is filled with hardware stores and candy shops. There are butchers and spice shops. Then there is an outdoor food market.





We walked through to the food market. There were these baked sweet things that looked like small donuts. We decided to try a couple. We went out of the damascus gate and sat under a tree.





The mini donut things were actually like a fruit hamenstashen. More crisp on the outside and firmer on the inside with a kind of savoury fruit jam filling. And covered in icing sugar. I enjoyed them.



We continued through the markets and picked up some real turkish delight and nougat, which we decided to save for later.

Lunch was a chicken slices sammich picnic.



I remembered seeing an internet café down a nearby alley. So we sat down outside and tried to connect Ozy up. We couldn't really get a signal, but the coffee wasn´t bad and the vibe was nice.



The alley was peaceful compared to the main street of Jaffa gate. It was good to just sit in the relative quiet. The tables were outside the shop, large low tables with short stools around, in the middle of the cobble stoned street. As we sat and drank we saw Aaron, the guy from our hostel. He was a return customer to this joint. We all sat and chatted for a while.



Back at the rooms we played around with linux. Turns out the wonderful Asus EEE is even better than we thought. It had an inbuilt program to put our photos onto the net. It was only hidden by a minor glitch in the most recent update for the photo program. Once we fixed it by adding some lines of code (well Josh fixed it) we were on our way. We could upload photos! And thats what we did. Lots and lots and lots of photos. And ate turkish delight.

Sitting in my room, overlooking the dome and the churches, there was a sense of calm. There were sounds from all over the city. Everyone was praying, not fighting. I heard the call to prayer, Jewish mincha broadcast over speakers and church bells ringing. People weren't fighting or killing, just praying, in the same tiny city, wrapped in ancient walls. I sat on my bed, looking out over the golden dome and the citidel and all the beautiful old buildings. Just listening to all the people. It really is a beautiful city.