Day 3

Bible Lands Museum

Bright and early we went to the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, near the government center of the city. I thought the museum was going to focus a lot on actual Biblical history, but that wasn’t quite the case. It focused a lot more on the land. A little bit about the people of the land, but more about what they produced and how that fit in the big picture of history rather than the Bible specifically. For the first 10 or 12 galleries, I actually listened to every single little piece of the audio tour… then I started “skimming.” I listened to the audio introduction to each gallery, then walked around it looking for things that seemed interesting or unique. The galleries I found the most interesting were the ones that actually related to things I was familiar with: the first and second temple periods, the Tower of Babel, the Persians conquering Babylon, Alexander the Great conquering the Persians, etc. etc. The massive quantities of bowls and primitive weapons all kind of blend together.

The Museum for Islamic Art

After a quick break for lunch back at the hotel, we set out again to another museum. The Museum for Islamic Art was set up chronologically, starting with art, jewelry, and other wares dating back to the 4th century and ranging to the 18th and 19th centuries. It was incredible how well preserved some of the pieces were. The first thing that struck me was a set of dominoes from the 5th century. I had no idea the game of dominoes was that old. There was also some really beautifully painted pottery, textiles, and weapons. Lots of standard museum stuff. The unique things about this museum were a photo gallery documenting life in Yemen, which according to our guard has one of the highest rates of terrorism, and a gallery of pocket watches and clocks. I always find photography documenting other cultures super intriguing, and this was no different. Very National Geographic-esque. Loved it.

The watch and clock gallery… definitely unique, but I am nowhere near interested in clocks enough to dedicate the amount of time it would have taken to listen to the info about each watch. There was one special one that was made for Marie Antoinette, but it wasn’t finished being made until after she had been killed. Others were neat, but again, just not one of my areas of interest. (not my photo)

Dinner and Ben Yehuda

For dinner, we drove into the center of town. Everything opens up after Shabbat ends on Saturday at sunset, so a lot of restaurants and stores were opening when we were arriving there. Alissa, Rachel, Kester and I got dinner together at an Italian restaurant named Spaghetti. The portions were huge. I got spaghetti with roasted eggplant, and I barely finished half of it. We got a chocolate fudge cake for dessert for everyone to split too.

After that, we went just up and down Ben Yehuda Street, which is a main pedestrian street/outdoor mall full of little stores. We went in a bunch of stores, and I officially started gathering souvenirs for people. Around 10, we got a taxi back to our hotel and stayed in the rest of the night.