We set off to try to find the Sandeman free tour which we thought was at 10 am at the Jaffa gate, it was not. We wandered around in the Christian quarter and found the Via Dolorosa and stopped at a Church which was built the sight where Jesus was sentenced and whipped. There was a "Holy Land" experience-type film that we saw, well, not really a film, more of a projected image with verbal subtitles. We paid our shekels, and in we went and the door closed. We were in a stone room and the film was projected on the walls. We had sat down on some stones, but had to get up and turn around to see the film! It wasn't that great, but, hey, it was worth the experience.
this is looking back through the courtyard
I never found out what this alcove was, but an awful lot of people came into it
This is part of Via Dolorosa, sadly, I don't recall where!
We ended up taking a nap and woke up kind of late, around 7:30. One of the few places open on Friday night was Focaccia Bar. We headed out. The food was good, what was really great was the focaccia, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with chopped garlic, absolute heaven! My main was asparagus gnocchi and Bill had another type of pasta. I think mine was the winner.
The place was thumping when we got there, as one would expect on a Friday night. Next to us were seated a group of older Americans. I was flabbergasted when the woman sitting at the table turned her beer back to be sure that the bar tender was told that she wanted a full glass. I guess she didn't understand the little black line on the side of the glass that was marked with 375 ml. Not the top of the glass is 375 ml, to that little black line is.... I was really embarrassed and felt for the waitress. She pleasantly took the glass back and a fuller one appeared.
Wandering back to the apartment, we witnessed the police arresting 2 guys. We couldn’t tell from our vantage point if the men being arrested were Israeli or Palestinian, they were handled a bit roughly. No hitting or punching, they were pushed up roughly against a gated store. We had no idea of the offense and there were plenty of other witnesses, so we opted to continue on our way. Which brings to mind how plugged in Israel is. Everybody has a mobile phone, even the guy sleeping on the street or begging for money...they all had phones. On our last day we saw them whipped out and filming a dispute between a woman and a tram cop. The officer was being filmed in his interaction with the woman who was yelling. We guessed (and this was an educated guess, that she had either no tram ticket, had not validated her ticket, or had tried to validate an expired ticket. This scenario could have been our experience in Prague where we ran into tram cops. Not fun in any language).
We slept hard that night.
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