Very Nice, But...

Jerusalem's Mamilla Mall is upscale, but not too much. Many of the stores are the standard Israeli Mall chains, the ones you find on the better main streets and all the malls. I think it was designed to be a modern "Cardo," the ancient shopping street discovered and repopulated in Jerusalem's Old City. There's no roof, meaning, chilly, rainy, sunny--depending on the seasons.

When we first made aliyah, we shopped on Mamilla Street, before it was taken down to be rebuilt and modernized and all "poshed up." Pre-1967, only poor people lived there. It was right on the border between Israel and Jordan. In 1970, when we began shopping at Levi's little grocery store, most of the residents had been relocated to poorly built public housing in what was then the outskirts of Jerusalem. The only other store we patronized, and continued to for a few years after moving to Bayit V'Gan, was a fantastic "conditoria," fancy bakery.

For over 35 years, I had nothing to do on Mamilla Street. Now they've opened a mall.

In theory, it's nice, but...

• unless you enter in a car via the parking lot, there are a lot of steps to go up from most of the street entrances.
• and, there are two parking lots. The first you pass charges ns10 per hour or ns50 for the day. There is no sign indicating that there's a second parking lot for those shopping in the mall. That parking lot is free for the first three hours and then ns10 per additional hour. If my daughter hadn't been sure that it was supposed to be free, we would have paid to park.
• The public toilets can only be accessed via stairs

lots and lots of stairs. Lots more than you can see in these pictures. We asked some workers lounging around if there was any elevator access, and the answer was:

NO!!