St. Andrews and the Citadel

As I look out our hotel window, the sun is setting and the warm temps. of the day are dropping. We took a walk this morning on the outside of the Old City to the Chapel of St Andrew, a Presbyterian church supported by Scotland. We include a picture of this both for our Scottish friend Bruce Campbell (his wife Sue does not quite qualify, as her maiden name of Kunkel is about as Scottish as Stuenkel) and for our grandson Andrew.

Schindler's grave in center with the rocks

On the walk back from there, we found the Christian cemetery that holds the grave of Oskar Schindler. We recall the scene from the end of “Schindler’s List” where survivors he saved came to his grave and place the traditional rocks on it. You can see lots of such rocks on his grave, quite a tribute.

For lunch we again chose pizza from Jacob’s Pizza across the street that we ate once more on the terrace outside our Gloria Hotel. And we are so glad we ate close to the hotel, for when Mark went to return the tray we had used, he found our tour guide Naim sitting there, eating before he came to the hotel to find us. We enjoyed one last visit with him and exchanged e-mail addresses, hoping to see each other again. He made the sign of the cross over each of us before he left and told us he had done that for each member of our tour group at the airport. He was a wonderful guide and we are grateful.

Our afternoon excursion was The Citadel, which houses the Tower of David and a great museum of the history of the Holy Land. It started with the Canaanite days, about the time of Abraham and Sarah up to the Six Day War of 1967. We again enjoyed identifying the areas and buildings of this city from the lookouts from one of the towers.

Our last two ventures were walks, one called the Rampart Walk, which goes along the top of the Wall that surrounds the Old City of Jerusalem. It is not possible to take this all the way around. We went from the Joffa Gate north until we had to leave at the Lion’s (or Stephen’s) Gate. It was interesting looking down into the back yards of homes and seeing children playing on soccer fields and basketball courts not visible from other walkways. The second was a stroll through a high end shopping area just below the Joffa Gate outside of the Old City. We found a Columbia Store there, among lots of other American stores. We post this for our son Chris who works for them.

We head now for a dinner, final packing and an early bed in preparation for our early pickup tomorrow morning that will take us to the Jordan part of our trip. We regret not being able to be here for worship at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer tomorrow. That would have been wonderful, we know.