The Mount of Olives

Today my mom and I went to the top of the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is a large hill (mount) that has huge cemeteries covering its slopes. Most of the cemetery is Jewish, though a small portion at the bottom is Christian. This was the second time we walked up the Mount of Olives. We went up around a week in a half ago with Ellen. This time my mom and I decided to not cut through the Old City to get to the Mount of Olives. We walked around the outer wall of the Old City and then went into the mini-valley that is at the bottom the the Mount of Olives. In this mini-valley we saw a goat herder with at least 50 goats. Some of these goats weren't your typical looking goats; some had spots, some where black, and some were just playing odd looking. After taking a minor break in the mini-valley and watching the goat herder, we decided to continue our walk up. This time on our walk up, we decided to go in and walk through parts of the cemetery. We saw a few graves that had blue paint on part of them. We wondered what this meant and walked to one of them. At one of the graves that had a big blue rock on it, there was a Jewish man who was praying and spoke English. We asked him why a few of the graves had blue stuff on them. He told us the people in buried in them were important people. The grave that had the blue rock on it that we were standing in front of was an important rabbi from 300 years ago. We don't know who this rabbi is because he told us his name in Hebrew and we don't understand Hebrew. Once we climbed up to the top, we went to this hotel called the 7 Arches. When Ellen was here and we went up the Mount of Olives with her, we went into the 7 Arches because we needed a break and though it isn't a very nice hotel, it is basically the only place that you can stop at and take a break once at the top of the Mount of Olives. Mom and I went into the 7 Arches today because we wanted a break and because it was freezing outside, and the 7 Arches is heated. After we had had our fun at the 7 Arches, we decided that it was time for lunch seeing as it was already noon and we had to get down the Mount of Olives to get to a place for lunch. On the way back we decided to walk through the Old City. While we were thinking of places we could go for lunch my mom remembered that she had heard about this fabulous restaurant called the Village Green. The Village Green is on Jaffa Street, Jaffa Street is around a ten minute walk from the wall of the Old City. It was difficult to find the Village Green because everybody we asked about its location had no idea where it was. When we finally found it we found out that is was vegetarian and was all like salads, odd soups, and other healthy vegetarian buffet stuff. I really wanted something with meat, so my mom and I decided to go to the Thai restaurant that we saw up the street. The portions were huge at the Thai place, though the food was good, it was nothing like the Thai food that I'm used to. When we finished lunch, we decided to walk to Mahane Yehuda, the big farmers' market, to buy some food for dinner tonight. While we were at Mahane Yehuda my dad called and said that he was at the central bus station and that he could meet us at Mahane Yehuda in ten minutes, so we got to walk home with dad. Today was a fun day!