The Ramparts

Yesterday night my aunt, Ellen, arrived! :) So today was her first full day in Jerusalem and we wanted to do something cool and fun. This morning my mom, Ellen, and I walked to the big Safeway-like-market to get some food necessities for the week. (That was not the fun part.) After we got back from the market we all walked to Mahane Yehuda to do some more grocery shopping and to show Ellen a huge local farmers-type market. She found it very interesting and took many pictures. Because my wire for my braces came out of a bracket and was kind of barely holding on, we thought that we should go to an orthodontist, and luckily we asked my orthodontist for a sheet of orthodontists that we could use in Israel in case something like this happened. The orthodontist we went to luckily had an opening at 12:45 today and so we went. On our way from Mahane Yehuda to the orthodontist we stopped at a falafel stand to get some lunch. It was not the best falafel we've had, but not the worst either. After lunch and on our way to the orthodontist, my mom and Ellen went home to drop off the groceries and my dad and I continued on the orthodontist. We said that we would meet up in the Kardo so that we could walk the ramparts. The ramparts are the top of the wall surrounding the Old City, so the view is spectacular. My orthodontist appointment went fine and my braces are now back to normal! Once we met up with mom and Ellen we walked through the Old City and saw some landmarks but not the Western Wall, we knew that we would do that after the first rampart because that rampart ends at the Western Wall. The ramparts walk was amazing! The view was spectacular! Especially of the M0unt of Olives. On the slopes of the Mount of Olives there is a huge cemetery. On the top, there is a bunch of churches and the Mount of Olives Observation. Once we'd gone as far as we could on that side of the ramparts we walked back through the Old City so we could walk on the other rampart that goes into East Jerusalem. Though the look-out-type view wasn't quite as amazing from this rampart, the view of all of the houses and schools and other stuff in East Jerusalem was just as interesting. There was lots of trash, but we could also see how local, not very rich, Arabs live. Almost every house had laundry hung up on the roof. We didn't walk all of this rampart because it was already 4:30pm and some of the gates to get onto the ramparts were closing and we wanted to go to dinner, so that we could get back home soon. Today we walked 32,400 steps, a little over 15 miles!