Acting on the advice of yesterday's tour guide, we planned this morning for a return to the Old City to visit the major iconic sites of Jerusalem -- the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall.  Although there was a forecast of rain and 35 mph winds, we decided to walk in order to get in our daily exercise.  There was no rain but the wind was pretty brisk though fortunately at our backs for the most part.  We are beginning to get the lay of the land in the rabbit warrens of the Old City as we navigated more or less directly to the entrance to the Temple Mount, location of the Dome of the Rock.  It is truly a magnificent building at least as viewed from the outside (non-Muslims are not allowed to enter).  (Craig believes that when he visited the site 50 years ago he was able to enter but we will have to check his old pictures on that as Phyllis does not fully trust his memory.)  Upon exiting the Temple Mount we retraced our steps to the Western Wall which was not heavily populated at that moment, and we were able to approach closely.  In both our views the Western Wall stands in sharp contrast to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in its dignity and the reverence it engenders.

We have received more than a few warnings to avoid the Damascus Gate which opens onto Palestinian territory.  The fear is that in light of the current tensions, one will be harassed by Palestinians, even people so obviously tourists like ourselves.  Others we talked to said balderdash, it is perfectly safe.  Having time to kill before lunch, we decided to see who was correct and found our way to and out of the Gate and into Palestinian territory.  As it turned out, we saw not even a hint of a problem, greatly increasing our confidence in our wanderings, in particular as we embarked on finding a place to eat lunch.

Just before we left Anchorage we had noticed an article in the NY Times regarding little known but very good eating places in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City that were frequented almost exclusively by locals. The article gave a great description of the food and virtually no information as to where the establishments were located.  In particular for us there was a kabob place (Kabab al Sha'ab) that sounded great but with a description of its location limited to "at the entrance to the spice market".  With still plenty of time to kill before lunch we decided to take a shot at finding the place, a quest in which we succeeded despite the minimal description and the fact that there is no name above the restaurant.  Fortunately, as we cruised through the spice market, from the corner of her eye, eagle-eyed Phyllis recognized the guy cooking the kababs from the picture accompanying the Times article.

It was still early so we went all the way back up to the Jaffa Gate area to get a bit more information from the Tourist Office and to visit a well known Armenian pottery shop.  On the way, we glanced in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to see if perhaps it was less crowded than yesterday.  No, the line to see the purported tomb was still unbearably long.  With two out of three missions successfully accomplished, we returned to Kabab al Sha'ab, now carefully saved on Google Maps, and had an excellent and well earned lunch.  Our work now done, we faced a choice of taking the light rail back to our place or walking into the wind.  Walking won the day when Phyllis mentioned that we would walk right by a gelato shop.

We spent the rest of the afternoon with trip planning, getting reservations, communicating with future hosts and perhaps most importantly, getting a car reservation for our next stop in Madeira which we had inexplicably failed to do before we left Anchorage. We fought hard and successfully avoided a nap.  (We have to get our sleep schedule on the local time zone.)  The day ended with a trip to the shuk to visit the Hatch Brewpub for a flight of beers and a healthy dinner of wings.