20180604 Jerusalem: Yael picked us up at 8:15 and we headed over to the Herzl Museum for an interactive tour of his vision and thoughts. They do these kinds of tours really well. Then walked up Mount Herzl first to Herzl’s grave, next the cemetery area where leaders of Israel are buried and then to the military part of the cemetery. Of course, Yael’s stories, general and personal, were meaningful. All the graves are quite simple. Those of the leaders of one design and those of fallen military another.
From there, we drove to Yad Vashem. Marian and I had been here in 1962, but it is much expanded. Yael walked us through the main building adding commentary or directing us to various items or screens where survivors told their stories. It’s both a hard place to visit, but important to do so. Whole groups of IDF personnel were in there learning the history of the Holocaust as part of their training. After the main building, we visited the synagogue, Building of the Eternal Flame, and the Children’s Monument. What we saw and experienced are very difficult to put down in writing. So many feelings well up. We saw history develop and its results. In many ways, I don’t want to explain more of what we saw and felt. It’s something one should experience altogether on one’s own.
After lunch there, Yael drove us to the Mamilla Mall where we shopped and then walked back to the hotel. Around 7:30 we walked about 15 minutes over to Music Square where there are several restaurants. We ate at Pikolino (dairy) which was next to a meat restaurant. At ours was a group of 70 high school seniors from a Houston Jewish day school on their senior trip. At the meat restaurant were over 100 Orthodox women celebrating. And this was all outdoors. Cold, so they brought us blankets! Good dinner and a nice walk home. Gotta get up early to leave at 8:00 fully packed for another set of adventures.
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