Mount of Olives and all sorts of wonderful sites there

On Monday we walked/hiked/climbed/sweated it up to the top of the Mount of Olives, which is just across the street from the Old City of Jerusalem. The view of the walled old city from the top, overlooking the thousands of Jewish tombs on the side of the hill is breathtaking. Iit costs $50,000 to be buried on the Mount of Olives... its a very big deal because the Jewish people believe when the Messiah comes he will raise those buried on the Mount of Olives first.

My favorite sights were the Garden of Gethsemane (sp?) and the Grotto of Gethsemane, where Jesus often met with the disciples and where he was eventually arrested and betrayed by Judas. The grotto is a underground cave that is now also a chapel. We went in and had two lucky moments - first to be completely alone (i.e. - no hoarding tour groups) with just a couple of chapel nuns around, and then we came back later on our way back down the Mount because I loved being there so much, and a mass had just started! The priest gave a wonderful sermon about living like Jesus, and he stressed praying constantly in our everyday lives. He had worked with Mother Theresa for a while (!) and he quoted her as saying "if you don't know how to pray, just pray" and talked about one thing we knew difinitively about Jesus, even if there is so much we don't know, is that he prayed constantly. It was really amazing to be hearing this sermon, in the Grotto in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus himself worshiped and prayed with his disciples!

We also visited THE Upper Room... where Jesus and his dicsciples are said to have had the Last Upper... it was under some renovation and so between the hammering and drilling, and smell of new plaster it didn't really "feel" quite so authenic as the cave, which hasn't really changed for thousands of years... or the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane, some of which date back 3000 years!! The building that houses the Upper Room used to be a home, and now just around the corner from it is also a pretty chapel dedicated to Mary, and its said to be where Mary (Mother of Jesus, not Magdalene) lived and died after the resurrection of Jesus.

Today is our last day in Jerusalem. We're going to visit an archeological site - the City of David, and visit an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, and visit some of our favorite places again. Tomorrow we pick up our rental car and head to the Dead Sea!

I'm going to TRY to post some pictures now, but if you don't see any, at least know that I tried!