Israel, Day Four - - Rest and a Museum

We "hit the ground running" when we arrived in Israel this past weekend.  By today, we needed a day to rest.  I spent the morning cataloging the many pictures our group has made over the past few days.  It is easy on a trip of this sort, I have found, to forget what a picture actually represents.  I tried to remedy that today and plan to work on it more this evening.

At lunchtime we walked over to a nearby restaurant where we met some attorney associates of Debbie's for lunch.  Both the men are expat Jews, who lived formerly in New York and New Jersey.  The older gentleman was especially fascinating to talk with.

After lunch we came back to the flat so that Chris could send in some homework (I kid you not), because he had a 10:00 East Coast deadline for the assignment.  Chris is a high school senior, doing dual enrollment.

In the late afternoon we walked a couple of miles to The Israel Museum.  What a fascinating 3 hours we spent there, and still did not see everything. We were there at a perfect time, the evening, and at no time did I feel "crowded" by others or rushed by them.  Much of the time, I was in an exhibit alone!  I only took one picture, because photography is prohibited inside the museum buildings.  But, my favorite exhibits were the following:

• an amazing exhibit of actual Dead Sea scrolls.  Seeing these was the perfect complement to our experiences at Qumran yesterday.  You will recall Qumran being where the scrolls were found.
• the outside exhibit of the city of Jerusalem in 68 C.E., right before the Roman invasion and subsequent "fall" of the city to the Romans.   This is a 3-D relief map which you can walk around while listening to the audio segments pertaining to it.  So interesting!  That is the one picture I did take, and it is not of good quality, nor is it of the entire map.  It will give you a sense of the exhibit though, which is why I have included it.
• an exhibit showing the clothes and artifacts of Jewish births, marriages and burials
• an exhibit walking you through the Jewish calendar and each of the holy convocations (major feasts), seeing artifacts associated with each feast
• seeing various synagogue artifacts, such as Torah scroll holders, finials, covers, etc.
• walking into reproductions of 3 ancient synagogues from around the world

We took a taxi home, thank goodness!  Our feet were so tired!

One humorous note and then some logistics.

A friend back home sent me a picture of a UGA bulldog sweatshirt and asked me to find her one like it that says BULLDOGS in Hebrew under the picture.  I have yet to find it, despite much searching.  Chris thinks she is punking me, lol.  May be.....

I had a bit of a scare after returning from the museum - - an unrecognized charge on my credit card.

In what I thought was a cautious move, I only brought one card with me on the trip.  When fraud was suspected this evening, I immediately called my wonderful credit card company, Capital One, whom I cannot say enough good things about!  The suspected charge was an iTunes charge.  SO, I needed my Apple ID and password.   Again, to be safe, I use different passwords for different things and do not have them memorized.  I made pictures with my iPhone of the PWs I thought I might need on the trip.  And, when this situation came up, LO!  I had the password I needed.  Thankful!!  I just need to blast those pics off my phone when I return home.

Ok, that's all I've got for today.  Tomorrow, we (finally, lol) head into Old City Jerusalem.