Blog-log Day 10 - getting under the skin of old Jerusalem

This risks being one of the most unlikely blog post yet - and I sense you have doubts already... bear with me.

• The American Colony Hotel (much recommended by a friend) in East Jerusalem.
• The road sign for Nablus Road - which is where the Hotel is...
• And Palestinian Pottery - specialising in hand decorated tiles Est 1922.

The Hotel is the heart of diplomatic, international visitors in East Jerusalem - a regular hang-out for journalists, businessfolk and politicians. But the Amercan Colony Hotel also has an amazing history and heritage to it and a visitors book to wonder at.

The Nablus Road sign is perhaps a shade unfair - but as I walked from Damascus Gate along the Nablus Road you have a sense that you are moving into the European Quarter yet you are in the much spoken of East Jerusalem and it looked to me like this was a bullet pitted street name sign.

And so to the Palestinian Pottery - I was reading my book by Edwin Samuel (Sir Herbet's son), A Lifetime in Jerusalem - and I recollected that I read that he set up a fair in the Old City of Palestinian craftsmen.

"In 1921, the first exhibition of indigenous Palestinian arts and crafts, largely peasant ware, was held in the Citadel, and I was made the organizer" Edwin Samuel, Second Viscount Samuel.

So the connecting threads are these:

1. all three are on the Nablus Road, there is much much more to East Jerusalem than Palestinian/Israeli dispute (don't judge a book by it's cover or just the reviews),
2. Herbert and Edwin Samuel are inextricably links to all three - Nablus Road was a main thoroughfare for Mandate officials,
3. the Colony Hotel was a key part of the British Adminstration and there some pretty compelling empirical evidence that Edwin Samuel was involved in the promotion that led to this company setting itself up...