Friday ! In the afternoon, I went to the city to meet S🇪🇸 and R🇪🇸. We had planned to visit something in the Old City before the start of Shabbat. We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is in those moments that I feel lucky. Normally, this place is full of tourists who came from the rest of the world to see and pray on the place Jesus was crucified and buried. But these are not normal times, those are Covid times. When we entered there was practically no one. At the entrance, there is a flat stone. It is reportedly where Jesus was put on after being removed from the cross. Some people were kissing this stone. After you enter a bit further into the church, you can see a massive foundation which was built around the actual tomb of Jesus, the foundation being much recent. We only stepped in the (former) resting place of Jesus after having visited the rest of the church.
If you walk around the church, you will find some stairs that will take you upstairs to the rocks where the wooden cross on which Jesus was crucified was planted. Not only it is a beautiful place, but it is one which captures so much of the Christian history. One will find it difficult to deal with it immediately. It takes a while to realize where you are standing. I said to R that for most of my childhood I heard stories about Jesus crucifixion and end of life as we know it and here I was, standing at that very place.
After exiting the church, S🇪🇸 had to leave us. R🇪🇸 and I carried on our visit by going to the Muslim quarters. There we walked into what appeared to be a market. I remember being impressed by the Manu smells there. It was like I was discovering a new smell at every new meter. We wanted to go to the Damascus gate and as it was Friday evening, there was a lot of people going the other way to the Dome of the Rock to pray. One other thing I noticed was the huge number of police in this specific quarter. The recent riots near Damascus gate probably are the reason. It’s funny because at the same time they make you feel safe as well as unsafe.
But anyway, we arrived in Damascus gate where we met R🇫🇷 and then, as the number buses available was decreasing dramatically at this hour, we hopped on a bus to go back to the student village.