Final day in Israel - Sunday

Sunday was our last day in Jerusalem. We had already seen all of the biggest things that we had wanted to see while we were there, so we decided to just wander around and check off a few of our things on our back-up list. We started with a yummy breakfast again at the same restaurant that we had been eating at every morning while in Jerusalem. Then we tried to make our way to the temple mount to try one last time to get in. We had both worn pants even though it was hot out, just in case it was open. A guard had told us that it would be open on Sunday, so we were hopeful. I think we got there at about 9:10 and there was a changing sign that noted that it closed at 9 am. So we missed it again.

We reviewed our options and decided to visit King David's city. King David's city is the ruins of the original Jerusalem at the time King David took over. This old city was actually built about 2/3 of the way up the hill whereas the current old city (the city where it was at the time of Christ) is only built on top of the hill. The only part of the city that is in the same place is the temple spot.

King David's city was pretty cool. Originally, we weren't planning on going because it cost a little bit of money, but we were both glad that we did. We just went on our own instead of getting a tour guide, but we were right in between two tour groups so we got to hear a lot of their explanations anyway.

The first spot was where they think King David had his palace. That was up toward the top of the hill close to the temple. It was cool to think about David walking around there and his being up on his rooftop that fateful night instead of being off to battle with his army.



Then as we walked down the hill we got to see the ruins of some of the homes that they think were the homes of some of the wealthier inhabitants of the city. There is one that they discovered in their excavations that had a room that had been sealed off by the dirt. When they opened it they found evidence that it was a record room that had been burned when Jerusalem was destroyed a little after 600 BC. It was fun to imagine that this may have been the home of Lehi and his family or the home of Laban or even that Lehi and his family  may have been walking around in this part of the city at some point in their life before they left Jerusalem.





We continued to walk around and got to see other ruins as well as look across the valley and see ancient tombs carved into the Mount of Olives dating back to this time. We learned that this is the most sought after burial place for Jews dating back to when they first settled here. The Jews believe that when the Messiah comes he will come on the Mount of Olives and that the resurrection of the dead will begin here. At the bottom of the hill you can see the holes for the ancient tombs, but up the rest of the side of the mountain are more modern tombs that have been added over the years. It is thought that there are more than 70,000 graves in the Mount of Olives cemetery right now.

I guess I didn't get a good picture of it so here is one a found online. It was pretty amazing to see all the graves up the side of the mountain.

Then we got to go into the tunnels of the city. From the explanations that we heard it was hard to tell who exactly started these tunnels, but the idea was to build safe passageways to get to the water so that if enemies were outside of the city they couldn't cut off the water supply. We walked around to the different water spots and then we had a choice of two tunnels to travel through. One was dry and lighted and the other was pitch black (you had to bring a flashlight) and filled with waist deep water. We felt the water and it was really cold, which would have felt nice on the hot day. However, we had our long pants on from wanting to go to the temple mount and no one else was going that way. So we decided to stay dry. I know my parents had gone the wet way when they visited Jerusalem a few years back and had really enjoyed it, but we were happy that we chose the dry way.



After seeing a few more of the ruins of King David's city we made our way back up to the current old city. We got to the entrance spot for the temple mount and the electronic sign was flashing that it closed to visitors just 15 minutes earlier. It was a bummer that we just missed it again, but there was no way for us to know that they were going to open it up for that short period of time. We had gotten some pretty good views of it from the BYU Jerusalem Center and a couple other times when we were on the rooftops, so we were okay not getting to walk around it.

After that we decided to just make our way to the airport. It was about 2 or 3 when we were done with everything in Jerusalem and our flight didn't leave until a little after midnight, but we knew we had a journey to get to the airport and we were both pretty tired at the end of our 2 week trip. First we had about a four mile walk with our luggage to get to the bus station. When we got to the bus station it was all under construction and so we had a little trouble finding our bus. We finally found the spot to buy our tickets (just about $5 each from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv which we thought was pretty good) and then went to sit in the terminal to wait for our bus. There was another bus loading up on the platform where ours was going to leave from so I decided to run and find the bathrooms. Unfortunately they were 4 floors below where were at. And then when I got there I had to pay to enter them. And they were super dirty and didn't even have toilet paper in the stall I decided to use. You would think that since we had to pay money they would be taken care of a lot more. By the time I got back to our platform Rebecca was sitting there alone - the bus had come and gone. Fortunately another one came just 20 minutes later. When we got to our terminal we had to go through all of the customs and security again. I don't know if he was joking, but one security officer asked us what we were doing in Jerusalem as he was checking our passports. I told him we were tourists. And he said "what? you were terrorists?" I thought I saw him smile when he said that, but we quickly corrected him.

The flight home all went smoothly. We got to watch a couple more movies and had a couple meals. On the two separate flights Rebecca and my movie players were having difficulty, so Delta ended up giving us both $25 gift cards to a merchant of our choice from a list of about 20 different ones. I have been having some good experiences on Delta and now that we don't live in Alaska any more I think it is time we changed our frequently flier program and credit card over to them. We landed in Salt Lake at around 11 am and we just had to make our way down to American Fork to pick up our car. We took the Trax and then the Frontrunner and ran into a celebrity on the Frontrunner. It was Mallory Everton from Studio C. She got on our train just a stop after us. We watch that show occasionally, so we both thought it was pretty cool. I saw her first and pointed it out to Rebecca, but Rebecca missed her. So Rebecca walked around the train at the next stop to see if she could casually see her. She did and came back reporting that she would ask for her autograph if she walked by our seat before we had to get off. She didn't so we didn't get one, but I would have been embarrassed to ask anyway.

Rebecca's sister-in-law picked us up at the train station and fed us some pizza before we started our 3 hour drive back to Pocatello. It was so great to see our children again. I don't know if they were as happy to see us since it sounds like Grandma and Grandpa Little really spoiled them while we were away. We did get a lot of hugs at least. It was a wonderful trip, but we were really excited to be back home!