Last day in Jerusalem

We had a really short and relaxing day today. I don't know why when looking at the itinerary I didn't notice the almost 4 hour gap this afternoon. We are mostly packed up anyway so didn't need the time for that. We can't find that there is any printing facility in the hotel, so we'll be asking for boarding passes at TLV airport when we check our bags.

We learned that the farewell dinner tonight at 7pm will be at a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. It will be at Olive & fish.That doesn't sound too promising for me. I have been able to easily avoid fish and seafood all trip without any help. In the good news category, we never ate the nabs or apple we had stockpiled for Shabbat. So, I know I'll have something to eat tonight no matter what.

We departed for Yad Vashem at 8:30am. Ori walked us around some of the outdoor features first and described our visit and gave suggestions. This was our first museum we visited unguided here in Israel. I know Ori wasn't allowed to guide or use our headsets because Yad Vashem uses their own. But we still used guides at the last 2 museums. I have no idea why not here. It was fine and probably because it is so disturbing to some people that they get in and out as quickly as possible. We were in around 9am and needed to meet outside on the other side by 11am. It is a tall triangular shaped building that you can see all the way through length-wise but that you have to zig-zag back and forth from side room to side room to progress to the far end to exit. So, you are really forced to spend time and look. Since we felt we knew a lot about the end period of the Holocaust, we focused on the pre-war run up to the Holocaust. I found it disturbing in the historical parallels of a party and candidate coming into power based on a campaign of hate speech. Both the womens' restroom and the Children's Memorial had what was for me a disturbing use of multiple reflection mirrors. An infinity of images that was disorienting. I know the Children's Memorial was designed to do it. I asked Ori about the Ladies' Room and he had never heard about the U-shaped room of mirrors before and the Mens' Room is not like that according to him and Clay. A coincidence?

At 11am we met in a small classroom in the Youth Study Center with Berthe, a French Holocaust survivor. She was 6 when anti-Jewish activity began in Lyon and 9 when her parents sent her to live on a farm with a widow near the Swiss Alps with a certificate stating a local priest had baptized her. She lived on the farm until she was 12 or so and reunited with her parents who had been maquis. It was probably a fairly typical story. We spent almost 2 hours with her.

About 1pm, we arrived outside the Machane Yehuda market. It was much larger and more restrained than the one we visited in Tel Aviv. I don't know if I said it before, but I quickly got over my initial dislike of Jerusalem. I am not sure what I was reacting to on our first arrival in town. It was not a good first impression. I still wonder if it was just the view on arrival because seeing it and approaching it from a distance from the east instead of the west was fine for me. We were back on the west side of town again today and I recognized some of the first day landmarks and it is just different. That said, we drove by the Knesset today and that was new. Back to the market. We had to meet back at 2:30pm and we on our own to have lunch. We wound up at a Yemeni place. There are evidently a lot of Yemeni Jews living in Israel. We ate at Jahnun Bar. Fearing over ordering again, we ordered a pizza malawach to share with the intention of ordering a sweet version in a choice of chocolate, honey or peanut butter for dessert if we liked the first one. We did like the first one, so Clay ordered a chocolate one. He was asked small or large which was weird because the menu only had one size. Then again the menu only had  one thing in 2 sizes and after our "dessert" was delivered we realized that somehow Clay's order had become one for jachnun. It came with a cup of tomato sauce, a hard boiled egg and some hot green sauce. It was clearly not dessert. We didn't like it much, especially since it wasn't what we expected, but we ate most of it anyway. We passed a group of 4 female soldiers eating ice cream and figured that would do. Clay bought a selection of pastries before we found a crepe place with ice cream. I had cookies & cream and Clay had dulce de leche. He said it wasn't as good as last night's gelato. It was certainly an International experience anyway.

Since it will be late after dinner and we have a 7:30am departure tomorrow morning, I will post this now I may not post again until after we get home. It depends. I won't have a Business Class Lounge to post from this trip!

Photos