(Please Don't) Come Again, Thank you.

Waking up before the alarm, I crept out of our cave-like, windowless, Zionist/hippy decorated room to the lounge to wake up with a cup o’ Joe. Dave wanted to see the Dome of the Rock so we made our way through the Jewish Quarter to get to the entrance of the Kotel (Western Wall). Unfortunately it was closed because of Pesach so we meandered back through the busy streets of the old city. Bustling with the Haredim making their way to the Kotel with their kids, stollers and wives trailing behind them. They dress in all black and white, with women usually covering their hair, but always covering their elbows and knees.
We wanted to see a German church with an amazing view of the city but that too was closed even though yesterday the guards assured us it’d be open. No worries, we did a pop-in of the Holy Sepulchre again. Well Dave did, and I people watched. Then we decided we wanted to do a walking tour of the city. We began at the old City, walked through countless neighborhoods and districts with distinctive ethnic and religious identities. We ended up in the religious neighborhoods completely by accident. All the Haredim were in the synagogues praying or playing with their children in the streets. The feel was different the moment we entered the neighborhood. Housing units were smaller, smooshed together with houses stacked on top of each other like legos. There were posters plastered on top of more posters, slowly disintegrating off the walls. Flakes of paper, brick, toys and signs littered the sidewalks where the children were playing tag. The only English we saw in a good hour and a half of was on two signs in the city which read: “Groups walking through our neighborhood severely offends us. Please do not disturb the sanctity of our lives.” & “Please dress modestly in our neighborhoods,” with lists of prohibited and acceptable clothing.
We felt awkward. And noticed. Even dressed modestly in jeans, a shirt and a fully covering sweater, one man turned his head away from me and covered his eyes as I passed. You could smell dishes warming on the heaters kept on during Seder and the families doing their normal family activities. We found ourselves way beyond where we thought we were and emerged farther up the hill from the Garden tomb. The general feeling I felt from wandering the streets was more or less please do not come again, but thanks for stopping in.
We ate lunch on the lawn by Damascus Gate next to the towering walls of the old city, in Hebrew known as the Ancient City. We napped on the lawn, journaled and napped some more. Finally gaining enough energy to move, we headed back into the heart of the Arab Quarter hoping to find hot nuts. Instead, we found a beautiful Austrian Catholic church. Well kind of a church. It was also a coffee house, a hostel, a garden and a museum. Turns out at the top, there is a flat roof which offers a stunning view of the city; especially the Dome of the Rock, the famous churches and the neighborhoods of the Old City. Reveling in the beauty of everything ancient, we lingered for a while; a long while. We relaxed in the shade of the garden, read, thought and reflected on our tri-religious Easter experience. It was time to go so we gathered our bags from the hostel and walked about an hour to the bus station. Jerusalem was still silent with all the stores still closed for Pesach. It was a bit creepy, like a ghost town. At 8pm exactly, everything shifted- cars were seen on the roads, stores opened, people emerged like ants coming out of an ant hill. We hopped on the bus to make our way back to our little slice of the world- Kibbutz Na’an.