First Jerusalem Trip Post-COVID

We took a family trip to Jerusalem yesterday.  I was thinking it would be weird because it seems like normally half the city is tourists and now there aren’t any.  I wondered what the city would be like with “just the locals.” Turned out a lot of stuff was open – from just walking around it looked like maybe half of the stores and restaurants.  But it was definitely way more empty than usual. (although despite this and much to my annoyance, it was still impossible to find street parking.) Most of the shops and restaurants in Mamilla Mall were open even though they were mostly empty, but old city itself was almost completely deserted. One the one hand it was nice to have the city to ourselves, but it was sad to see so much emptiness there. Being at the Western Wall was really strange, too. It was sort of like for this brief time, we get this all to ourselves, without all the hustle and bustle. In that sense it was really special – like wandering through your own store after you’ve set everything up but before the grand opening. You have that special time where its just you before you throw the doors open to the world. Only here, we don’t really know when the doors will open…