Entry #14 - Snow in Jerusalem
Jerusalem feels like it gets a lot of rain in the winter. The two other winters I visited were also wet. But the pattern this year over the whole country is quite erratic. So while Jerusalem is getting the normal amount, the North is dry and the South is above normal in spots. A good website for tracking Israeli rainfall and weather in general…
On to the event! Our good friends from Chicago thought they were escaping winter when they came to visit us… but today as we were walking around in the Old City it began to snow. All the Jerusalemites became very excited - which was fun to watch. We had a tour of the Western Wall tunnels (which is worth a post on its own) and had a substitute guide because the first one fled home. We were informed that he left because he lived out of town and was afraid that he would be trapped for the night in the city. That should have been our first clue… we finished the tour and returned to the parking structure by the Jaffa Gate. The first entry was closed and then the second… and then we discovered that the entire lot was locked up! The snow was really coming down by this time and we were freezing. Fortunately there was a phone number and about twenty minutes later the kid who was supposed to be collecting parking fees and letting us out showed up. The locals who had accumulated outside the garage gate really let him have it! He kept protesting, “but it was snowing!” Meanwhile it was our job to get home through 5 inches of snow. Having grown up in Russia, my friend did a masterful job driving, but all about us were minor accidents and out-of-control cars gliding by.
Next morning the view was stunning!