Today was pretty amazing. When you walk on the Kotel (Western Wall) plaza, the ground under your feet seems just like that, "the ground". When you descend into the excavations below, however, you see a whole other city down there, and you realize that what seems like "ground" is really a sort of roof. Think about a subway system in a modern city, and you get the picture. Except here, the city below was built first, and the new city was built right on top of the old. The Arabs built a village on top of the structures from the period of the Second Temple and used the now underground areas as sewage and garbage dumps. As we were walking around inside the excavation, we saw a complex system of arches that held up a bridge that once led to the Temple. We actually stood and walked on the original sidewalk built along the foot of the wall now buried and hidden from sight. It was mind-boggling. And it added a very realistic feeling to what we did yesterday - sifting through the rubble that was collected from this very area for archaeological research. Including the piece of pottery I found!
An afternoon in the Jewish Quarter. Lots of small, winding alleyways, too narrow to seem like streets. We were actually surprised when a car tried to get through. We didn't realize we were walking in the middle of the street! How annoying it must be for the people who live there to have these hordes of tourists clog their streets and keep them from entering their homes. They didn't yell at us, though.
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