Museums and Sweet Serendipity!

Believe it or not, we ACTUALLY made it to the museums yesterday. Ah-ma-zing. We still had a few technical difficulties with those buses, but once we got on the correct one, we flew on over.

There was no photography allowed inside most of the museums, so my apologies for not having more detailed visual representation.

First we went to the Israeli Historical Museum. They had an exhibition on biblical music. It was rather interesting but still a bit boring. It had mostly artifacts from other Mesopotamian cultures. There were a few artifacts from ancient Israel, but it was not that interesting. All together, this was a mildly interesting exhibition.

The main Israeli Museum doesn't open until 4pm. Don't ask me why. So we decided to head over to the science museum. THAT was a cool place. At least I thought so. See, it was a bit of a children's museum, really. Much like the science museum in balboa park. Actually, more of a cross between that and what I remember the children's museum in downtown San Diego being like. But this was much more fun.

It had a really cool water ball thing in front of it!

Michael found it rather amusing that I went off and starting touching things and pushing buttons and playing with things. It's because I'm 5. Whatever. If you lose your ability to have fun in a place made for having fun then ... you're ... a grown up. And who wants to be a stinky old person? Michael amused himself by taking lots of video of me goofing around at the cool museum. Photography was allowed here. Here's a video of the blowie papers into the air thingie.

We started getting hungry so we decided to eat some junk food at the cafeteria in the Science Museum. Because that's what you need to have when you're in a children's science museum, darn it!

Anyhoo, after snack time, we decided to kill some more time and explore the Science Museum some more and take a few more pictures.

Here's some more insight into how awesome this place was ....

After that, it was time to head over to the main museum. When we got there, we found out that the Wine Festival was there later on in the evening AND it was starting that night! Naturally, we purchased tickets and it worked out for the best because we were sort of worried as to when we'd get to the wine festival because we had other things planned for Wednesday and Thursday. More on the wine festival later.

At the main museum, we went on a guided tour of the dead sea scrolls. It was really interesting and informative. I think taking a tour of a museum like that is much better than going off on your own and being bored, like in the first museum. We got a very rare glimpse of the most complete of the dead sea scrolls, it usually is locked away safely due to it being the only one that is the entire book of Isiah. It was on display for the first time in 40 years because of Israel's 60th birthday. After this year, it most likely won't be seen again for another 40.

We also visited the sculpture garden and the contemporary art museum. Thoroughly enjoyed that. There was also outside a mini model of what they believed Jerusalem looked like at the time that Herod renovated the 2nd temple, just before the Romans destroyed it . Here's a couple of pictures of that.


After all that, it was about time to go pick up our wine glasses for the festival. Oh yes, this was awesome. So for 55 NIS, per person, you get one wine glass and unlimited tasting as well as some free food and some dinner that you pay extra for. We headed over and sampled a few vintages and this was the most fun of the entire day!


In that last picture I am sufficiently buzzed. We both got nicely buzzed last night, actually. I was pretty plastered for the bus ride home, actually. It was great! And even more fruitful, I found some lovely wines to pair with dishes I have planned for the holidays. I had the most amazing chardonnay, and I'm not a chard person mind you, but this one was fantastic! Perfect for Thanksgiving turkey. The second I tasted it, I knew what to do with it. We also found a really nice deep and robust Merlot blend with some deep cherry notes. That would be fantastic with duck. Rosh HaShonah will be lovely this year, I tell you!

So now we've recovered and we're off this morning to do some more shopping and then later this evening a tunnel tour in the Old City. Wish us luck! More later!