Be Holy - Jerusalem

Being a native Israeli I must admit Jerusalem was never my cup of tea, too many uphills and downhills, bad traffic and mess. So my personal plan for Jerusalem was basically – let’s try to get over with it without any severe mental damage ;-)

Arriving to Jerusalem for the first time as a tourist was a totally different experience. It started with the fact that we had Yael, our amazing guide, with us to show us the way and tell us the stories of each Synagogue, Church and oasque, continued with the fascinating tour of the city of David, the underground water tunnels and all the holy places. Yael even took us to eat to one of the best Humus places in the old city for lunch and took us for a spectacular night tour- a totally different way for me to experience Jerusalem.

Another fun aspect of the Jerusalem experience was the food, aside from the superb Humus we ate at some good restaurants I would have never think of trying if I was on my own, like the Austrian hostel where we had a mouth watering Strudel and Shababeek in Sheik Jarrah which was a great culinary experience – some might say even surpassing the old city Humus :-). One more great culinary experience led by Yael was our Machene Yehuda picnic. Our tour group was split into 4 teams, each with a list of ingredients and a budget. The teams were sent into the Machne Yehuda market and told to purchase their entire list. And here comes the catch:  the list was written in Hebrew while all our team members' knowledge of Hebrew consisted with a few slang words like “Sababa”, “Ma hamatzav” and “ahi” so this was a fun challenge. At the end of the day we had a wonderfed picnic consisting of all the food we purchased from the market. Bottom line – Jerusalem can be fun. Just make sure you have the right guide...