Just steps from the new Holy Family Hotel, I slipped off my shoes to enter the Church of the Blessed Virgin, where the enormous, rough-hewn pillars of the nave appeared quite a bit older than the basilica-style church. From somewhere behind the church"s iconostasis (the ornate wooden screen separating the church"s sanctuary from its nave) came the sharp buzz of sandblasters, a cloud of fine dust seeping through the small cracks and rising to the ceiling. Renovations here, it appeared, were not quite complete.
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