I love the personality of the Old City so much that I always stay in this historic area when I travel to Jerusalem. Its pull is powerful, as inside its ancient walls stand three sites of extreme importance to the three major Western religions: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, the Western Wall [...]

Escaping from daily life’s reality and routine into a cornucopia of newness and wonder is one of the many universal appeals of travel. Almost everyone on earth likes the excitement of new experiences. All of our hearts temporarily halt when we gaze with our own eyes at cathedrals, oceans and castles we’ve previously only seen [...]

The morning is but a few minutes old when I find him. Shopkeepers in the throes of opening for the day are arranging their displays and setting chairs outside their doors, from where they’ll call out to passersby, “Please, come into my shop.” The jewelry shop that belongs to Joseph is right where I’d placed [...]

In Part I of Jerusalem Jeweler, I met Joseph, a man who crafted me a pair of earrings while we talked in his jewelry shop in the Old City souk on my first solo trip to Israel. I returned to Jerusalem in October of 2009, never having forgotten that I hadn’t paid him. Today I’m [...]

I have found that when locals spot you traveling alone, they are sometimes inspired to gravitate toward you. Solo travelers are, by the nature of our all-alone status, more approachable than people moving about in pairs or groups. Here’s the begininng of a tale of a sort of friendship that formed with one man in [...]