Day 13: July 20th and 21st, 2010 (Jerusalem and Atlanta)

Woke up at 6:45 AM showered and went downstairs for breakfast. Then went to the bus at 8:00 AM. We all have mixed feelings about leaving. We love it here and had a great time but it has been two weeks and we miss home. Our first stop was the Israeli Museum. At the museum there was a 1/50th scale model of old Jerusalem that took six years to build.

Miniature City of Jerusalem

Our guide explained the layout of the city and how it was back then compared to today. It was interesting to get a big picture view of the city especially after walking around it the last few days. Also at the museum was the Shrine of the Book. This is a structure that looks like a big Hershey kiss and houses the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Zack holding up the Shrine of the Book

We walked around inside the building but no pictures were allowed. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and then boarded the bus to our next location. We drove by the Knesset

Knesset Parliament

which is Israel’s Parliament building and continued for another 30 minutes to the outskirts of town to Latrun. Latrun is Israel’s Armored Corp Museum/Memorial. A soldier of the Armored Corp division was our guide and she took us around. Latrun was the site of a British Police building and an armored tank battle. On the grounds of Latrun there must have been close to 50 tanks from different countries and different time periods.

Kids on top of an Israeli Tank

Our guide showed us the cross section of a real tank and explained the roles of the various crew members. In addition, they had the modern Israeli tank that is currently in duty. You were allowed on most of the tanks but not inside of them. Next she showed us the memorial wall of fallen armor corp soldiers. Within the old police force building they had a few exhibits including a video of the corp, a database of the fallen soldiers and a detailed video of each soldier that was killed on the specific day of the year, i.e. who was killed on this date. There are only two dates out of the year that no one was killed on. After she finished her walking tour they gave us time to check out all the tanks on the grounds. Hannah and I went on a bunch of the tanks and took some pictures.

Dad being silly

They had a great sampling of tanks from past and present. We then met up with everyone in the gift shop and then boarded the bus. Allison wanted to go shopping in a different part of Jerusalem so we asked the bus driver to drop us off at a street called Emek Refa’im.

Zack on Emek Refa'im

The Rittenbergs decided to join us also. This was in a nicer part of town and had more upscale stores. We went into a spa store and Hannah bought some exfoliating scrub. It was time for lunch so we stopped at a nice pizza place and each had a slice and a drink. We then picked up a cookie at the bakery and fries at McDonalds for Zach. Continuing down the street we came across a gelato store called Alda and Al and I split a couple of scoops while Zach had a cone. Across the street was a supermarket and we picked up some candy and chocolate bars to bring back home. We started walking back to the hotel but figured out we were going the wrong direction so we backtracked and grabbed a cab. We got back to the hotel around 3:30 PM and packed up our stuff. We finished packing around 5:30 PM and then put our luggage outside our room at 7:00 PM and headed downstairs at 7:30 PM to take the bus to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.

The kids with Scmuel at Ben Gurion Airport

It took awhile to go through security and they pull one of our bags to the side to double check. They seemed to have a concern with Hannah’s toothpaste (go figure). At the airport we spent time getting our VAT reimbursement and exchanging our left over Israeli money. Luckily we gave ourselves a lot of time to get to the airport but by the time we made it through security we were rushing to grab some food before boarding. I had a chicken laffa from McDonalds and Al and Zach had a Pizza Hut pizza. Hannah bought a tuna sandwich and ended up throwing it away. We boarded the plane and took off around 11:30 PM. I watched three movies (Green Zone, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Clash of the Titans). I slept a few hours but not very restful. We finally landed at 5:45 AM local time and waiting on line at passport control for a while because their computers went down. Al’s parents picked us up at the airport at 7:15 AM and we went to IHOP for breakfast. We finally made it home at 9:00 AM after a wonderful two week experience in Israel.