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Date: 09 Jul 2010 14:05:13
Title: Jerusalem
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Tuesday 6th July

 

But first a ride out to Jerash. As part of our arrangements with ‘Above and Below’ in Aqaba, we had booked another ‘people carrier’ to transport us in Jordan today and so another smart vehicle complete with driver and working air conditioning, picked us up at 8.30 am from outside our hostel. We drove to Jerash which is one of Jordan’s main attractions and billed as one of the Middle East’s best examples of a Roman provincial city and more importantly perhaps for me, this was planned to be the last bit of rubble gazing for quite a while! In truth it is a quite remarkable site and it is impossible not to be very impressed with it all. We have over the past few months been spoilt by visiting any number of quite outstanding places and they do begin to pale and blur a bit, but this is another of the sites out here that was hidden under metres of sand and lay largely undiscovered and ignored for centuries, despite being surrounded by the modern town. It is very extensive and the two theatres plus the chariot racing arena alone make this a worthwhile visit. Sadly as in so many of the places we have been, our photography has not done the places any real justice. We only publish the very basic pictures on the website (www.rhbell.com) but have an extensive library of photos that Sarah has edited down from the original thousands taken, for folks back home to view if they ever get the urge.

 

After an adsorbing 3 hours in Jerash it was time to head for the border crossing back to Israel and continue our journey to Jerusalem. Now ‘border crossings’ and ‘Israel’ are not words you put together in a sentence lightly. As we have already found out this can be a very long and messy process and it very much matters where you cross into Israel depending on where you want to go next and how long you have got to spare. We had opted for the Allenby bridge Crossing, which is a bridge across the River Jordan, however for obvious reasons, in Jordan this is known as the King Hussain Bridge. There is another bridge known as the ‘Jordan Valley Crossing’, but this is a long way to the north of where we wanted to be. Rather confusingly this is also known in Jordan as the ‘Sheik Hussain Bridge’. So you can guess I expect where this story is going...rather like us, to the wrong border crossing! We kept asking the driver as we went along if he was heading for the King Hussain Bridge and he repeatedly confirmed this, but when we finally arrived and spelt it out one more time he realised his – or his boss’ mistake. So cue another 2 hours driving south to the correct bridge. Here we had to go through the rigmarole of checking out of Jordan before handing over our passports and boarding a shuttle bus for the trip across no man’s land and the bridge to the Israeli border. We were handed our passports back when we got onto the bus, but this was just part of an endless set of procedures designed to wear the average terrorist into submission. The shuttle took us slowly to the Israeli border crossing the mighty River Jordan. Ah well, for those that do not know the geography of this part of the world you need to know that at this point the Jordan is slightly smaller than Barbourne Brook at the bottom of our garden in Worcester. Israel keeps all the water in the Sea of Galilee for its own use thank you and only a trickle makes its way to the Dead Sea, which is getting smaller by the minute.

So as the bus reaches Israel we have to get off and show passports whilst they search the vehicle. We then get on again and travel another few yards before getting off again. Now we go through endless passport and luggage inspections and body scans (passport inspected a further 5 times) and queue to get our new visas. We were sent to a booth with a new girl on duty along with her supervisor, who was determined not to help her at all so she learnt the hard way! This was not very helpful for us as we were a very unusual party in that we have to beg them not to stamp our passports as once they have an Israeli stamp in them, we can never visit any of the other Arab states again, which when you are sailing in bad weather could be a serious issue. So as before, we asked for our visas to be stamped on an insert which confused the new trainee totally. It took an age and dozens of questions before this all became clear to her and even then they needed to know why we kept coming in and out of Israel and more to the point why were we returning now. A small boat does not feature in the training manual. As it turned out we were very fortunate as the crossing was quiet and we were clear in under 2 hours. We then bought ‘shared taxi’ tickets for a minibus  ride to Jerusalem, but this involved sitting in a stifling minibus for 30 minutes before he even started the engine, as he could not leave until he had a full vehicle.

 

At last we were off and it only took around an hour before we were clambering out close the Damascus Gate of the Old city. Our hotel tonight was interestingly called the Lutheran Hostel and we wandered through the narrow streets of old Jerusalem which are little more than one huge almost underground bazaar (Jerusalem operates on all sorts of different levels) for a little while before we finally found the right place. The Lutheran Hospice was wonderful and an absolute delight. It was pretty basic (read chic boutique – but Rob doesn’t know these things!)but everything was new and clean and the few staff were so helpful. They recommended a restaurant not far away (nowhere in the old city is far away but the streets are modelled on a maze) and we had a nice meal and a very good nights sleep.

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