Jerusalem Day 3 (Saturday May-16-09)

Jerusalem Day 3 (Saturday May-16-09)

As we have done each morning at the Dan Panorama Hotel we had a large delicious breakfast with a wide verity of foods.

We went in the late morning by Taxi to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem where a copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls is on display. The 2,000 year old scrolls were found in 1947 in a jar in a cave overlooking the Dead Sea. The building where the copy is stored as well as other artifacts looks like a white jar from which the scrolls were found. Adjacent to the building is a black wall to indicate the negative side of things.

There is also a large model of the city of Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple. The model which is to scale shows the walls, the Temple and all the buildings that were there at that time.

In the gift shop at the museum we purchased a children’s popup Passover Haggada that our grandsons Brady can use now and Jayden can use when he gets a little older.

It was 88 degrees this afternoon so we again decided to take a rest and then go out in the late afternoon after things cooled off.

In the late afternoon we searched for a nice restaurant that was open on Shabbat. We walked down some side streets and got a very nice view of the Old City of Jerusalem. We also stopped and looked at some of the hotels that we pass by every day, King David and David Citadel. Jackie left her sun glasses in one of the places we stopped at and we went back to check and a couple sitting in the lobby chairs overheard us asking the bellman for the glasses and handed them to us. Jackie was very thankful for getting them back. We found a nice French restaurant, Katy’s, on a small street not far away. It had good food but was more expensive than we were used to paying. Since we ate there early in the evening we were the only guest, but we had very good service with even the chef coming out of the kitchen and making suggestions, which we agreed to try. When it came time to pay, they told us their credit card machine did not work and I did not have the $150.00 to pay in Israeli shekels. Fortunately I did have $200.00 in travelers’ checks which they did take and gave me change in shekels.

There is a building on King David road that is under construction and has the scaffolding covered with a screen. The screen has a large photo of the city of Jerusalem to hide the scaffolding which is shown below.

The scaffolding is more apparent below the photo in the photo below:

I was also finally able to get the phone number of a distant cousin of mine, Jochanan Moses, a retired flight engineer with El Al airline. I called him and talked to him and his wife Marilyn. We plan on meeting next Thursday at their home near Tel Aviv for lunch. They are going to try and arrange to have some of their children and an uncle, Shlomo Moses attending the lunch. I also got the phone number of another distant relative Naomi Sela. I left a phone message for her, but I have not connected with Naomi yet.

Travel to Israel

We flew from San Francisco to New York on American Airlines for 5 hours and then flew another 10 hours from New York to Tel Aviv, Israel on El Al airlines. We did have a three hour break in New York’s JFK airport. This gave us time to change terminals and have a small lunch (5p.m. EDT, 1p.m. PDT).

At the El Al ticket counter they gave each passenger a grilling to see why we were flying to Israel. They asked why we were going to Israel, what synagogue we belong to and what my Jewish name was. They use this information to screen passengers. We seem to pass.

We did sleep 4-5 hours, after taking a sleeping pill, on the El Al flight, which was a big Boeing 777 airliner. We watched a couple of movies. I watched “Mall Cop” and “Bride Wars”, which were fun movies but not very challenging. They served a snack, dinner and breakfast on the 10 hour flight. The food trays for each meal had every item wrapped in plastic and then the whole tray wrapped in plastic. They called it double wrapped for protection. The hot dish was separate and also wrapped in foil and then in plastic. It was a struggle to get everything opened without a knife or scissors. There was also lots of trash to pick up after the meal. This is not very ecological friendly, but it does add safety.

We finally woke up on the plane to be served breakfast and saw some land with a few snow capped mountains as we flew. We later could see the Mediterranean Sea as well at the boot of Italy, Sicily, Crete and many other large islands. It was on a clear day as we flew down the center of the Mediterranean Sea to Israel. As the flight landed in Tel Aviv, Israel we could see many farm fields nearby.

In Tel Aviv we got our luggage went through customs and we decided to take a train to Jerusalem. The automated ticket machine did not list Jerusalem, but only the station names. A kind young man help us get the tickets and on the right platform and track at the airport, to a station in Tel Aviv and then to change trains for a train to Jerusalem. Jackie and I had trouble lugging our suitcases up the stairs to get into the train, but we finally managed to get off and on.

The train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem took us past farm fields, many with sunflowers growing in them as well as wheat and corn. We saw “Jewish” horses, sheep and some cattle. The train also took us though a gorge with rocky hillsides and old man-made stone walls along the embankment, as we got closer to Jerusalem. The train was not a fast train and it took an hour and a half to make the journey, but it was very scenic. Many of the signs are in three languages, Hebrew, English and Arabic, so most people can manage to get around

We arrived in Jerusalem almost 24 hours later, if you count the time we left our home in California to the time we arrived at the hotel in Jerusalem. There was also 10 hours of time zones changes.

Our hotel room is modest for an expensive hotel, but it is clean and comfortable. The Dan Panorama Hotel is also within walking distance of the Old City. The hotel advertises that it had Internet capability, but they wanted $15/day for the service. We decided to look for an Internet café on our walk to the Old City in Jerusalem.