We walked up to Ben Yehuda Street, which is now a pedestrian mall with many shops and restaurants. We ate at the Rimon Cafe with Allan and Suzan, Sandy Berkowitz and Dick and Patty Strouse and had burgers and fries. The food was good and the waitress very tolerant!
After dinner we met up with Rabbis Rick and Susan and the rest of the group and walked back to the old city through the Jaffa Gate. There isn't much that is familiar as we walk through the gate. Jerusalem has grown into a commercial center over the years. The streets in the old city are still narrow and bustling, but there are many more shops and restaurants and it appears to be much cleaner than I remember. I caught a whiff of the smell that I remembered, but it lingered for only a second before it was gone.
We walked through the Armenian Quarter to get to the Jewish Quarter and the overlook of the Kotel (Western Wall).
We returned to the hotel via the Mamilla Mall, a mini mall outside the walls of the old city that has many shops that we see in the U.S., including GAP, Nike, North Face and Columbia. We walked past the Waldorf Astoria residences that are being built in an old gutted out hotel building, past the American Consulate in Jerusalem and up to King George Street and our hotel, the Leonardo (formerly the Sheraton). Our room is very nice, but still in winter mode so the heat is on - we will be sleeping in our twin beds pushed together with the window open to stay cool. The sounds of the city go on much of the night - cars honking, sirens going off, the Muslim call to worship at 4 a.m.
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