Day 8 "We walked a lot"

Wow this is getting long, Day 8, January 16, 2008. This was our day completely off. There was only Arabic in the morning (and I'm taking Hebrew) so everyone was excited to make big plans this day. I ended up going with a group that wanted to take a sharut (10 person van) to west Jerusalem (the modern side of town) get dropped off and then stop by the sites as we walked back all day. The Knessat(Isreali parliment) was closed so we decided to go to the Biblical zoo and the botanical gardens instead. The zoo was nice and the weather was sunny so it was warm and nice. We stayed til about noon when we were hungry, then we started walking, and walking and walking. We were way out in the boonies where things are really spread out so it took a while to find a place to get lunch. Then we walked and walked and walked. We saw the city go from the soccer stadium and the mall to Suburbia, to more city Suberbia (kind of like Sugarhouse) to a University area (where the boys that 'knew where we were going' finally called security to find our where we were) to downtown western Jerusalem. Where we found the famous international YMCA (Across from this building is the King David Hotel where President Bush stayed when he visited here last week, the whole hotel was booked just for him (and it's a really nice hotel))! The guy there told us we couldn't take the elevator so we climbed up the 100-something steps (painful). Then we could see exactly where we were. The Old city was only a little bit away. By this time it was about 3 pm and we were exausted. Since the city was so close now it was pointless to call a Sharut. (Before while we had kept walking and walking we kept thinking about calling a Sharut but kept saying 'we're probably not that far now'. On the way how we stopped on Ben Yahuda street. A fun part of town for shopping, I got my first Swarma with Heather and the rest of the group went to good old Burger King. I bought some gloves to keep my hands warm (been needing them) and we walked the rest of the way home, hiking up to the gate at twilight, just before dark (we can't be in East Jerusalem, where the center is, after dark). Moral of the story is. West Jerusalem over by the zoo is much more spread out then downtown and the old city, so get a ride back.