Saturday: Ramallah, Yad Vashem, Bethany etc

What a day. Well there are 18 of us sampling as much as we possibly can so its not surprising that there's too much to tell. Nine headed to the Israeli Museum for a couple of hours, many of us saw the exhibition of children's art about the separation wall which opened last night at St George's Cathedral. Four of us headed one mile east of the Old City to the Apartheid Wall just beside Bethany and managed to squeeze through it to get down to Lazarus's tomb. Others got to the Tower of David museum in the morning, and others visited there in the afternoon.

A crowd of us headed on up to Ramallah after two in the afternoon. We split onto two buses, and the first views of the separation wall running along beside us for three miles was disturbing and moving for many of us. There were a few surprises in Ramallah, from the cheese in the desert, to the machine gun wielding men paying too much attention to a two or three in our group. There was also the randomness of a new system of a direct bus from Jerusalem to Ramallah. This new service has only been happening for the last four days. A comment from one shop-keeper was that it had changed the mood in the place. It has shortened the journey time, but some of the residents are still too surprised at seeing a crowd of western 'tourists' turning up en masse for it to be relaxing for them or us!

The journey back, once we found the temporary and informal embarkation point for the Al Quds (Jerusalem) bus was the fastest of all my journeys -- 30 minutes door to door! We came via a couple of Israeli-Jewish settlements in the West Bank on a fast road. When we came to a check point the soldier took one look at the clientelle on the bus and stepped straight back off.

We've carefully planned for the next 3 days, which requires early starts (breakfast at 7.30am then 6.00am then 7.00am) so I guess I better stop blogging now and get some more sleep. Palm Sunday here we come!