This is my journal entry from 1/20/13 - Enjoy!

We went out to the Dome of the Rock today and it is a really cool, quite pretty building. It looks quite different from close up. It has a bunch of really cool colored tiles on the outside and is really pretty. By far my favorite part about it is the incredible peace that exists on the grounds outside. It is clean and quiet and much like temple grounds should be. It is hard to find a quiet, peaceful place here, so that was a really nice break. After that we went to the Jewish quarter of the Old City and bought some delicious pastries and then ate them in the plaza type area of Hurva square within the Jewish quarter. Afterwards we joined a large group from the JC for the Ramparts walk tour (walking around the top of the outer wall of the city). Most of the way through the tour we found a way to get off the wall and did so to do some exploring. We ended up at the soccer court where we played with the local kids before and did so again. Afterwards, Taylor, Lindsay Kelley, KC and I went to Zedekiah’s cave, which is a manmade cave which was formed because of quarrying the limestone for the building of some of the ancient buildings in the Old City. We then went to a gelato shop by Aladdin’s and ate some really yummy ice cream there, then headed home and on the way stopped and got some pizza from a little shop in the bottom of the Kidron valley just down the hill from the Center. We meet two guys from Switzerland there who are just here touring for a little bit. We had a nice conversation with them and by the time we left they had shared some of their pizza with us. They were nice.