Our last day in Jerusalem and we woke to sunny skies and light winds.  This good weather day had been forecast for a while and for that reason we waited until now for our visit to the Mount of Olives.  It was a great weather choice but maybe a bit less than optimum vis-a-vis the religious calendar.  While we were focused on Shabbat starting at sundown, we did not focus on the fact that Friday is the Muslim Holy Day and that a lot of worshippers would be traveling today from the Palestinian neighborhoods around the Mount of Olives to the Dome of the Rock.  This creates crowded conditions on the roads and can sometimes create tension.  

Our first task however, was to secure our rental car at its 11:30 reserved time (they shut down at noon for Shabbat).  We walked to the rental car place, just down the street from the iconic King David Hotel, and with a bit of confusion managed to get the car paperwork finalized and to sign up for Pango, the parking app.  The rental car company (Eldan) staff was very accommodating to allow us to leave the car in the parking garage until after 4:00.  This worked because the car company had its own exit that could be triggered automatically any time through camera recognition of the license plate.  Thus the Shabbat closure did not come into play as it apparently does in some garages.

We had determined that walking up to the top of the Mount of Olives was more than we wanted to do (though we would walk down) so we went over to the King David Hotel to find a taxi to take us up.  The King David Hotel is an iconic building in Jerusalem, the place where many of Jerusalem's famous visitors, including kings and presidents (pretty much all from Nixon to Biden) and celebrities from Elizabeth Taylor to Madonna, have stayed.  It is perhaps most famous for its role in 1946 when, while serving as the headquarters of the British administrative and military authorities, it was bombed by the right wing Israeli paramilitary group Irgun.  The bombing extensively damaged the hotel and killed 91 people.

After wandering through the hotel just to see the inside, we approached a taxi driver in front and asked about a trip to the Mount of Olives.  He was a bit reluctant because of the Muslim Holy Day and the slow traffic that would create.  However his sense of adventure overrode his sense of caution and off we went.  He should have listened to his sense of caution.  The drive was excruciatingly slow.   In essence, at the critical stretch, there is a one-and-a-half-lane road (bordered by stone walls and with two-way traffic) going steeply up a hill where cars randomly park in places where they are not supposed to be, causing the road to be a half lane.  There were a lot of horns, cursing, backing and games of chicken.  Eventually we got up and our driver got his well earned fee.

We were let off at the nicely done small park overlooking the Old City just short of our planned starting point, the Church of the Ascension.  Most (actually all) of the locations on our descent to the bottom are churches, most built on the spot where some biblical event allegedly happened.  Unfortunately all were closed at the time of our descent except the Church of the Ascension at the top and the Garden of Gethsemane at the bottom (there goes that timing thing again).  Well enough, as we have seen our share of the inside of the elaborately decorated churches here and, without question, from our perspective the Garden of Gethsemane and the accompanying Church of the Agony were the finest Christian sites we have seen in Jerusalem.  The Garden, consisting of a grove of mostly younger but a few ancient olive trees, was quiet and contemplative.  The church, centered on a slab of bedrock where Jesus was said to have prayed before he was betrayed, was spare with an austere beauty.  We were very impressed and pleased that the site was available to see.

From the Garden we worked our way up to the east walls of the Old City and then around to the south to the Dung Gate.  Stopping only briefly for a kabob, we wound our way through the Jewish Quarter to the Jaffa Gate.  We are getting pretty good at navigating the rabbit warrens of the Old City through our repeated forays as we are recognizing particular shops, such as the spice shop with all kinds of colorful spices and a centerpiece of a pyramid of different colored spices.  In fact a couple of times we were hailed by a merchant with whom we had obviously conversed at an earlier time who called out to us "Hey Alaska".  Phyllis continues to think we are recognizable because of the serious disparity in height and our shockingly white hair. 

Retrieving the car out of the garage went smoothly, which was a relief as an inability to get it out until Sunday would have been a major failure.  Parking, even around 5:00, was not easy and our swing through the narrow streets of our neighborhood did not reveal any viable parking places.  Fortunately we had a backup plan a little ways away that we had seen on one of our walks and found one tight spot against a vegetation-covered wall.  Phyllis did a masterful job parallel parking the unfamiliar car in a space that, when all was said and done, left about two feet distance from the cars in front and behind her.  We saw Orna later and she said that there were plenty of spaces available in the neighborhood after 6:00, but that was after dark and not a time we wanted to be driving on those streets.  We concluded our last day here with the leftover Museum meal and some of the excellent beer we had picked up yesterday from our friends at the Hatch Brewpub.