{"id":55,"date":"2006-05-27T23:34:31","date_gmt":"2006-05-28T07:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/27\/where-is-the-bank\/"},"modified":"2012-11-23T20:15:18","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T04:15:18","slug":"where-is-the-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/27\/where-is-the-bank","title":{"rendered":"Where is the bank?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0On Friday, I passed into Israel and made my way towards Jerusalem where I settled at\u00c2\u00a0a hostel in the old city.<\/p>\n

After going through the immigration officer, recovering your bag and going through custom, the first thing\u00c2\u00a0you need to do is usually get money in the\u00c2\u00a0local currency. This time, I did\u00c2\u00a0not need to do it at once as Rod exchanged his Egyptian pounds he had left and I did not want to exchange the Jordanian dinars I have left since I am going back to Jordan soon. So, I borrowed some money from him and planned on getting cash from an ATM as soon as we would get to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Once arrived in Jerusalem, we\u00c2\u00a0walked into the old city and found a very nice (except for the curfew and some other rules) hostel to stay at. The next step\u00c2\u00a0was to get money so we started going around in the old\u00c2\u00a0city and could not find any bank\u00c2\u00a0or ATM\u00c2\u00a0here.\u00c2\u00a0I asked\u00c2\u00a0to many\u00c2\u00a0shop keepers about that and they confirmed the fact: No\u00c2\u00a0ATM inside the old city! You have to go\u00c2\u00a0out and walk a bit to find one.<\/p>\n

Alright,\u00c2\u00a0so after\u00c2\u00a0having lunch, we went on and exited\u00c2\u00a0North\u00c2\u00a0by the Damascus gate in\u00c2\u00a0the search of a bank. I think we might have walked more than 1 hour in streets bordering the old city but could not find any\u00c2\u00a0banks. Asking the locals proved not easy as they either did\u00c2\u00a0not understand me (how do you say “Where is the bank?” in Hebrew yet?)\u00c2\u00a0or they\u00c2\u00a0just did not know where\u00c2\u00a0there was one close by! We had come to the conclusion that people in the old city do not use banks and keep all their money under their mattress!<\/p>\n

Anyway, since Rod had\u00c2\u00a0enough Shekels for 2 for the day, we decided to\u00c2\u00a0postpone the money hunt and\u00c2\u00a0resume our visit of the old city and neighboring vicinities by\u00c2\u00a0hiking to the top\u00c2\u00a0of the Mount of Olives and strolling around in the streets of the old city after getting back in through the Lions gate.<\/p>\n

We actually gave it another try later in the evening by going in the other direction once out of the Damascus gate but without any more luck. Whatever! Rod still had\u00c2\u00a0enough money and worst get worst, I could\u00c2\u00a0change some of my Jordanian\u00c2\u00a0dinars :).<\/p>\n

Yesterday, we decided to resume our search after visiting the Wailing wall\u00c2\u00a0and the Church of the Saint Sepulchre as well as some of the other stations and one of the church where the last supper might have taken place. We got out by the Jaffa gate\u00c2\u00a0and started walking North on Jaffa street as many people had told us there were banks up on that street. The added benefit being that it was in the direction of what is called the new city that is the animated part of town so we could check it out!<\/p>\n

We walked for like\u00c2\u00a010 minutes: no sign of\u00c2\u00a0banks. And\u00c2\u00a0 with all the shops\u00c2\u00a0closed\u00c2\u00a0on Saturday, there was no way to ask people.<\/p>\n

We continued on walking\u00c2\u00a0for like\u00c2\u00a05 minutes more and here it was: A bank!!! I have never been that happy to find a bank with an ATM.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2621.JPG\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And it has never been so hard to find one in any city I travelled to before! I usually just need to get out of my hotel and walk\u00c2\u00a0for 2 minutes maximum before I find one. But not in Jerusalem if you are in the old city.<\/p>\n

Funny hey!?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0On Friday, I passed into Israel and made my way towards Jerusalem where I settled at\u00c2\u00a0a hostel in the old city. After going through the immigration officer, recovering your bag and going through custom, the first thing\u00c2\u00a0you need to do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.30wonders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}