One thing to note about visiting this area is that the business hours vary depending on which religion they follow or if they are government ran. You’ll want to have some sort of a plan before going out for the day, or else you could show up to locked doors (this happened to us a few times!). The good news is that The Old City has a lot of little streets to walk up and down, so there is always something new to look at. Just check the websites of the bigger attractions to see what days and hours they are open so you can plan your days accordingly.

A lot of people choose to do tour groups when coming to Jerusalem or even day trips from Amman, Jordan. This is not necessary, and in fact, I suggest going as an individual. Although the city is packed with people, around 35 million visitors a year, it can be quite romantic. We chose to stay in a hotel in The Old City which was a great choice. Do note that you have to walk to your place within the walls, which means hauling your suitcases, but the convenience of being close to everything inside the walls was great. It only takes 5-10 minutes to walk anywhere in The Old City. Continue below to find out what a great few days we had in Jeruselum.

Day 1

When we arrived into the city it was around noon by the time we located our hotel and got settled in. We decided that we weren’t going to do much that day other than walk around and get ourselves acquainted with The Old City. Having a paper map of the streets inside the city is very handy. We did not have a local SIM card for our phones, therefor the use of data wasn’t really an option. Plus, I don’t always like having my phone out with google maps in my face. There are some streets signs that lead you in the directions of The Western Wall, The Via Dolorosa, The Church of Holy Sepulchre etc. so this can be helpful when navigating around. The streets are full of vendors, little shops and restaurants, but they do blend in with each other and look very similar. We just strolled around, had a nice meal inside a little family restaurant, got our bearings and had an early night to bed. You could definitely fit more into your day if you’d like, but we were looking to have a relaxing time while we visited Jerusalem - no rushing - no hurry.

Day 2

During our first morning we woke fairly early and hit the pavement without any huge plans. Our hotel was in the middle of The Via Dolorosa, so we had already walked most of it. We did want to experience it from beginning to end, so we decided to skip the second part of it and make our way to the Western Wall. It only took us about 3 minutes to get there, so we stopped at a cute restaurant right before the security check for tea and some breakfast. I absolutely love the fresh mint tea served in the Middle East. We were the only two in the restaurant, so service was quick! Once we were finished with our tea, off we went through the security gate. There is an information booth that we stopped at to purchase tickets for Western Wall tunnel tour, and I’m glad we did it then because they were almost sold out for the day. We could only get spots for late afternoon, so that helped determine what the rest of our day was going to look like.

We spent some time walking around the plaza, each of us visiting our perspective sides of the wall and then walked up towards the Jewish Quarter. We were going to visit the Temple Mount at this point, however the opening hours during the winter are 7:30-10:30 and 12:30-1:30. The line up was huge and it was already 10:00, so we figured we were better off to come back the next day. After picking up a coffee to go we found our way outside the walls through The Dung Gate and started our walk towards Mount of Olives.

Even though the streets around The Old City are pretty busy with traffic, it was interesting to see other parts of Jerusalem. We walked past the muslim cemetery all the way to the bottom of the Mount of Olives. Here we visited The Virgin Mary’s Tomb and then started the trek up the mountain. There are quite a few churches you could stop and visit along the way, including beautiful St. Mary Magdalene Church, but our main goal was to get the amazing view of the old city from the top of the mountain. If you’re not physically fit enough to walk up the mountain, you can hire a cab to take you to the top and back down. We like walking so, it was great to do it by foot.

When we finished our time walking the Via Dolorosa, we toured around the Jewish Quarter a little more on our way back to the Western Wall for our tour of the tunnels. I’d read mixed reviews about these tours, but we both enjoyed it. It’s an interesting perspective of the Old City, and we had a GREAT guide. After the tour was over, we chose a restaurant for some supper, walked around a bit more, and then turned in for the night.

Day 3

Seeing as we had missed visiting the Temple Mount the day before, that was first on the list. We were very surprised at how big the line up was when we got there, but it moved pretty quick. It is a nice change of pace inside the original walls of and walking around the ground of the temple. It’s a nice open space with great views in all directions. You do not need to spend a lot of time here, so we were off in a jiffy to find a bus to Bethlehem.

Getting to Bethlehem is really easy if you know what you’re doing, but we had to put our faith in the people we spoke to on the streets that we were on the right bus! You can take a local bus for very little money which will take you all the way to Bethlehem. There’s a bus station across the street from the Damascus Gate. You do cross the boarder into Palestine, which was very quick, but then the bus lets you off on a busy street and it’s up to you to make your way to The Church of Nativity. Some of the other tourist looking people got in taxis, but we decided to make our way on foot. Unfortunately we went one street too far over, so we ended up taking “the scenic route” to get there. There’s not a lot to do or see in Bethlehem, but it was a nice way to spend the afternoon. We toured around the churches, sat at a restaurant in the square for lunch, and then made our way down the market street to catch a bus back to Jerusalem. The stop at the boarder took a little longer coming back into Israel. All the local people had to get off the bus while the guards came onto the bus to check the foreigners passports. Everything ran smoothly and we were back in Jerusalem within the half hour.

It was around 15:30 when we arrived back at the bus stop, and our next destination was to visit the Israel Museum which was to open at 16:00 that day. This is where The Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. We looked around to take a taxi, however, the one time we actually wanted one, we couldn’t seem to find one! So being the type of people we are, we made the decision to walk. It was a little bit of a journey, but at a quick pace it took us about an hour to get there. I’m really glad we did decide to walk. Jerusalem has lots of green space, and beautiful buildings to look at. When we finally made it to the doors of the museum we were sad to be informed that the museum was closed! Apparently they changed the hours for this day only because it was an Election Day. I was really disappointed because I wanted to see the Dead Sea scrolls. So our next decision was to take a taxi or walk. Crazy us, we picked walk!

As we were approaching the last few streets before the Old City, we had remembered seeing a few people with shopping bags coming from down the street when we were walking to the museum, so we thought we’d treat our disappointment with a little retail therapy! Just outside the Jaffa Gate there is a beautiful outdoor shopping mall filled with lots of retail stores and restaurants. We did a little shopping, splurged on a beautiful meal (and dessert) and then meandered the streets back to our hotel for the night.

Day 4

The great thing about having flexible travel plans is that we were were able to extend our stay to allow us to visit the Dead Sea Scrolls before we left town. When reading about the different museums, it said online that the Rockefeller Museum had some of the scrolls on display, we figured we were lucky because it was only a 10 minute walk from our hotel and it had free admission. It’s a beautiful old building which is at the crossing part of East and West Jerusalem. We arrived just after the doors opened, so we had the place almost to ourselves. We toured around fairly quickly, and then came to the realization that there were no scrolls here. We asked the coat clerk, who in very broken English said “Israel Museum.” What? Now we had to find our way back to the Israel Museum!!! Luckily this time we were able to wave a taxi down, and be inside the museum doors within 15 minutes.

The Israel Museum is HUGE!!! You could easily spend a whole day there and not see all the exhibits. We had one specific goal in mind, therefore we did a small tour around the archeology building and then went right to the Shrine of the Book. This is the part of the museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls are the oldest existing Hebrew Bible which are on display for the public inside a beautiful white dome building. Because the scrolls are so fragile, they have a system set in place to display only a few pieces at a time while others rest from exposure.

Finally feeling satisfied that we had came to see everything we had set out for, we made our way back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and continue our journey in another country. Please read my article on Is It Safe To Travel To Israel? to find out the process of going through the Jordan - Israel boarder.

There was a time during our travels that we thought we might not visit Israel. Boy, am I glad we didn’t skip it! Jerusalem is such a beautiful city. The mixture between old and new creates such a wide variety of things to do and see making it easy to customize a visit for anyone. DO NOT miss a chance to visit Jerusalem - I’m so glad we didn’t miss ours!!!