We climbed down and found a taxi right away to take us to the Israel Museum. Our main objective was to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, which we did, and we also had time to walk through the garden and also see an exhibit showing some ancient masks, including the world's oldest mask (9000 years old).
We found a rather slow taxi back to the hotel, Anton said the car had over 460,000 km on it and was overheating. I think the driver was as old as the car. Our bus left at noon and made a 2 1/2 hour stop at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum just outside Jerusalem. The children's memorial was quite effective. It was a circular building, darkened, with 6 lit candles that looked like thousands of candles with the effect of mirrors. A recording called out names and ages of children killed in the Holocaust.
The main building told the story of the holocaust in chronological order with a lot of videos, personal stories, and items on display. I had heard of the badges the Jewish people had to wear, but never seen one. There was a beautiful emerald and diamond necklace on display. A family knew they would be sent to a camp soon, so the husband sold all their belongings and had the necklace made because he wanted to have some equity after everything was all over. He hid the necklace under the floor of his kitchen. However, his wife died in the camp, and even though he was penniless, he kept the necklace as a memorial to his wife. The museum was full of such stories and displays and we had so little time. But I could not have handled very much more. We all felt so heavy and sad afterwards. How could this have happened? Six million Jews before it was stopped? It's unbelievable. And each one of those people had a name, a family, a story. I was glad when I could leave, but it helps us to understand someone like Shmuel who has this heaviness on him all the time.
The airport experience was like none other I have ever had before. First they had to stop the bus before it was even allowed into the airport. A soldier walked on (with his machine gun as always) and scanned all the faces to make sure we were all westerners. When the bus let us out, the sign on the door had symbols for no smoking, no dogs, and no guns. We immediately were questioned and made to put each piece of luggage through an x ray machine. Some were tagged right away, but almost everyone had at least one suitcase that had to go through a special inspection line, to be opened and searched. We waited almost half an hour because a girl in front of us had every item in her bag removed and dusted for explosives. When they finally got to us, they didn't even open the suitcase, just tagged it right away. All in all we counted 7 security and passport checks before we got to the gate. The airport is like the one in Heathrow, where everyone sits in a central area with millions of shops all around, and you only go to your gate half an hour before boarding. This gave us lots of time to get in a last visit with our tour group members.
We got seats on the plane with Sebastian, and he was the hardest to say goodbye to. He has been such a good friend. When I got to the hotel I cried because I missed everyone, and I miss Israel. This is the first trip I can remember that I didn't want to go home! But here we are, sitting at Heathrow waiting for our flight home to Canada. And this is the end of my travel blog. But hopefully not the end of the wonderful friendships and memories we have made.
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