Friday, May 16, 2003 :::
 
My room was on the main level of the hotel, which to an American like me is the second floor. A good room - no tv, but a phone and heat for the cool early spring nights. Hard to tell the age of the hotel. Was it 100 years old, 1000 years old? More than likely a bit of both. A small casement window opened on the street below. At eleven in the morning, the city was about its business as European cars made tiny honks, Hebrew and Arabic chatter floated in the clean air and portable radios strained to the putrid harmonies of middle-eastern pop music. I stretched out under the llama poncho I'd bought at Machu Picchu and took a power nap. Four hours later, I woke up.

::: posted by Stormy Malone at 7:26 AM

Tuesday, May 13, 2003 :::
 
I stood on the curb inside the ancient walls near the only entrance to the city that allowed cars, the Jaffa Gate. The non-stop trip from Newark had gotten me to Ben Gurion Airport around 10:00am. From the airport. I called the Hotel Gloria in Jerusalem and booked a room. The entrance to the narrow street that led north from the Jaffa Gate was blocked by a piggy blue Mercedes, so my driver dropped me off at the curb and I walked a few hundred feet up the steep incline to my hotel.

::: posted by Stormy Malone at 8:51 AM