Israel Trip: December-January 2014-2015

 

Wednesday, in an off-and-on drizzle in the morning and distinctly cooler temperatures, we took a car and driver arranged by the hotel to Bethlehem. We saw the church built on the site where Jesus was believed to have been born, complete with the very short door to prevent crusaders on horseback from entering, forcing them to be humble.

Even cooler was the nearby Milk Grotto church on the site of the cave where Mary was believed to have paused while fleeing Herod, and nursed Jesus. Supposedly her milk turned the red stone white; there are fingermarks worn so deeply now into the white crumbling stone roof of the cave that I can barely reach my fingers to the back of them. Of her own accord, Samantha asked to nurse here, and while she nursed in the sling she hummed "Amazing Grace."

Though it was raining at the time, and quite foggy, we walked around the town a little, stopping in one souvenir shop, and also drove by a few scenic overlooks on the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemene. Since it happened to be the morning after Orthodox Christmas, nearly everything in town was shut up tightly, but it was still neat to be walking around.

Back in Jerusalem, we got all bundled up and walked over to Moshiko for a shwarma sandwich for Robert and the world's best sabich (sa-BEEKH) for me: hard-boiled egg, slices of fried eggplant, hummus, tahini, cucumber-tomato-onion salad, parsley, and pickled carrots inside fluffy laffa bread. Truly heaven. On our walk back to the hotel, it started actually to snow--odd, small, hard pellets of snow, not sleet exactly, but certainly not the kind of snow we normally expect here in Boston. It was pelting down quite hard by the time we got back to the hotel, though it would only stick intermittently. Businesses were shutting down around us; all the museums had already closed; and the markets and restaurants were closing their doors as well.

The hotel was prepared for the snow, though: they brought in a staff who could sleep at the hotel overnight, and they had a playroom which they opened up, complete with apparently more dolls and doll strollers and play food than anyone could ever use, several gaming stations, Twister, and a staff member who endlessly brought out craft projects (we now have at home two styrofoam ball snowmen, a painted plaster butterfly and hand of Fatima, and lots of precious drawings: "That's me and Marcus!" Samantha said).

We hung out in the playroom with an Argentinian family (a thirteen-year-old boy--they were here for his destination bar mitzvah--and a six- and four-year-old girl) until a little after 6:00, when we all went to the lounge restaurant for pizza and ravioli, since literally nothing outside seemed to be open. The hotel employee from the playroom learned that it had been Robert's birthday a few days before, so she sent fruit, chocolates, and champagne to the room with a nice note for him. Samantha demolished the chocolates immediately, Robert ate the fruit over the next few days, and no one drank the champagne, but we all appreciated the thought.

The next day, Thursday, we woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground, with a reasonable 1-2 inches of slush in some places. It was our last day in Jerusalem, and we had our last great breakfast of cocoa and capuccino art (though only a heart is pictured here, depending on the person doing it, we got even more elaborate designs--teddy bears, puppy faces, and a heart inside a heart), oatmeal, shakshuka, bagels with cream cheese and fish, and, of course, halvah.

After breakfast we took a taxi to the Biblelands Museum, a really nice, small museum with free audio guides that Marcus loved using. They had a general assortment of coins, statues, bullae (seals), coffins, weapons, etc. from the near east over many different periods, but what made the museum more interesting is that they didn't organize things geographically per se but rather chronologically according to the events recorded in the Bible, and matched up to historical events and eras. There were Biblical quotes on the walls of every exhibit, making it easy to see how a particular Bible story corresponded with the artifacts on display, and we had a fun time walking around.

We took a taxi from the museum over to Jachnun Bar for lunch, to sample Yemenite Jewish food. Marcus ate all but one bite (which he saved for us grudgingly) of a jachnun, a slow-cooked rectangular cake of filo that tasted carmelized from having cooked overnight. We also got slow-cooked hard-boiled egg which was deliciously tender and flavorful, a "pizza" on the flatbread malawach ("It's like a giant scallion pancake," said Robert), and another sabich--which surpassed yesterday's--in the same malawach. The guy making the food and serving us was very friendly and chatted a bit to us about the weather, the food, and the Old City (he grew up there).

From there, we went to the Tower of David museum, for more climbing around stone steps and walkways and looking at ancient artifacts and models of the city of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, at this point it was steadily raining, though at least not pouring, and we were all fairly chilly as well, but this was a nice museum too.

We walked through the Mamilla Mall one last time, finally getting Robert his frozen coffee at the Aroma coffee shop, and headed back to the hotel to give the kids a last couple hours in the playroom with their friend Yael (the teacher, as Samantha called her). We grabbed a quick dinner at the Waffle Bar a few blocks away from the hotel, getting a mushroom alfredo crepe and a nutella crepe, and then--since they were predicting a freeze overnight, and we were worried about the roads not being good for our early-morning flight--we left in a cab for the Sadot Hotel close to the airport again.

We bought some more Bamba and chips at the convenience store in the shopping center under the hotel that night, and the hotel gave us minimalist (but decent) breakfast boxes the next morning to bring to the airport with us. We crammed into an SUV cab with a taciturn German man and his slightly friendlier girlfriend/wife to head to the airport, and had good connections on the way back home. Though Robert was questioned closely by the security guard at the airport leaving Israel (Q: "What is your sister's name?" A: "It's complicated. . . ."), though Marcus got motion sick literally just as the plane touched down on the ground in Boston, and though our bags took forever to get off the plane in and onto a carousel, it was a smooth travel day at the end of an amazing trip.

Two final anecdotes: Saturday, at home for a day and mostly adjusted to the timechange already, Samantha was playing with Lego. "I'm making the Tower of David!" she informed us. "Really? That's David's tower?" Marcus asked, skeptical. "No, it's the Tower of David!" she corrected him. Then, Sunday, at church they were talking about the three kings. When the teacher got to the part of the story about how the kings returned home by another route rather than go back to Herod, Marcus casually mentioned that he had been there, at King Herod's palace. "No way!" another six-year-old shouted. "You're lying!" Marcus followed up by adding in more details about the bathhouses and the mountain.

Overall, we got to spend two weeks entirely enjoying each other's company as a family, eating delicious food (both new and familiar), meeting lots of friendly people, practicing our alef-bets, having some really active days and some slower-paced relaxation days, and making fantastic memories. Marcus says he now wants to be an archaeologist when he grows up. Samantha says she wants to be a snowman.

 

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Created: 1/11/15. Last Modified: 1/11/15.