Here is a view from our room at the Hyatt.  The view is beautiful, with the dome of the rock glistening in the sun. Unfortunately, it's hard to make out in the picture (left of center).

The Hyatt is a really nice hotel, with lots of nice touches; it was built to blend in with the unique topology of Jerusalem.  It consists of 5 or of cascading "terraces", with 7 courtyards.  We prefer the Hyatt over the Moriah and Renaissance, but it's significantly more expensive.  You can see part of it in the bottom right half of the following photo.

Emily and I spent a fabulous few days in Jerusalem (probably because the kids stayed in Natanya!)

The highlight was probably the guided tour of the Minharot (tunnels) along the western wall. The tunnels begin at the north side of the Kotel (or wailing wall), which is actually a very small segment of the full-length western wall (60 meters out of 488).

It was an awesome sight and feeling to walk along gigantic stones (2 bus lengths) that were cut by Herod's workers. I forget the actual tonnage, but it would require roughly 5700 men to lift. It's believed that the stones were cut from quarries on the north side of the city and rolled down to the southern corner. Pretty impressive feat of engineering.

Most of the tunnel's length runs under the Arab Quarter, and exposes construction layers from the First Temple era, the Second Temple, the Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Mamluck periods.

You pass by a point which is due west, and only 60 meters from the Kodesh Kodashim, the holiest of holy sites, and the closest a modern-day Jew can get to that sacred place.   At one point the tunnel goes thru an aquaduct that was used to direct water into the Hasomnean pools. It's quite narrow but rather high. Here's what it looked like...

The end of the tunnel ends at a newly opened doorway, which opens onto the Via Dolorosa. If you'll recall, the Palestinians rioted over the opening of this doorway. It's not even close to any sites holy to them.

As you go thru the tunnels, you certainly get a clear understanding of who this land truly belongs to.

The next two images were taken walking on the Via Dolorosa back to the Jewish quarter, with an armed guard in front of the group and one in back. The passageways are only slightly wider than a car.

We were warned that should we stop along the way to do any shopping, we'd be on our own. Naturally, we opted to hold off on buying any trinkets until we got back to the Jewish Quarter.

At one corner at the Via Dolorosa, a house was pointed to us which was smack in the middle of the arab quarter, with a big Menorah and an Israeli flag on top, and a long Israel flag ribbon draped on the side of the house.  This is Ariel Sharon's house, making a point, I guess.

I took the following photo while getting back to the Jewish quarter. I saw this really dark street and snapped a photo anyway. I did some image processing, and this is what came out. In reality, it was so dark that you couldn't see a thing looking in, from where we were standing - in the sun.

As you walk north from the Jewish quarter (I forget which street), you reach an intersection which is at the border of the Jewish and Arab quarter.  The photo shows what lies ahead, deeper into the Arab quarter. While other tourists do venture there, we chose to be more cautious and turn west, walking the straight and narrow street right onto the Jaffa Gate.  I certainly would not want to get lost anywhere in the old city other than the Jewish Quarter.