Shawarma and such

We spent the morning and most of the afternoon in Jerusalem today. Mostly we just walked around and got a bit of history. We will do a bit more actual site seeing tomorrow, though we did visit the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) and I got a lesson in proper dress: NOT shorts and a tank top. Thankfully I had just bought a couple of scarves, so I was able to cover up to enter the area. The professor that was showing us around forgot about the rule regarding women's clothing. Here I thought my knee length shorts were appropriate....

I did learn some pretty interesting stuff other than that. In the cities here you're not walking through history like you would in Europe, you're actually walking over it. The cities are built in layers over layers of previous buildings that were ruined. The street level from Jesus's time is actually around 70ft below current street level, and there are more levels beneath that. It seems so strange to me when people would cover up their history rather than displaying it, but that may have something to do with the fact that in America we just don't have that kind of history so I see it as so valuable. We don't have Roman pillars beneath our streets! There are excavation projects going on though, so some of it you can see now.

We hit the market at a pretty good time, so it wasn't crazy busy. Tons of shops and vendors, and smells. Good and weird.... and sometimes kind of awful. We got shawarma for lunch from a street shop. It was delicious. Ever since I saw "The Avengers" movie I have wondered what shawarma is. Now I know, and I like it. Easy explanation: it is meat and veggies stuffed into a pita. More detailed explanation can be found here.

Well, that's pretty much it for today. I should have uploaded some of the photos I took today onto my laptop, but my camera is in my room and I am in the lobby. You can see them later. Maybe I'll post a big heap tomorrow.