Holy Land Adventure

We captured lots of little clips of 360-degree video. That means you can “look around” the video with your finger or mouse. We haven’t figured out what to do with this video yet, so for now, here is the raw video grouped into a few playlists on YouTube. You can pause the video and look…

Behold, our marvelous schedule: 7:10 am TLV —> LHR (1 hr 45 min layover) 12:15 pm LHR —> CLT (3 hr 10 min layover) 7:15 pm CLT —> SLC (arrive at 9:29 PM MDT) I started the day a little nervous about the 1 hr 45 min layover in London Heathrow, but I figured, we…

For my final afternoon in the Holy Land, I went on a solo adventure. I bused into the Old City with the intent of revisiting the Dome of the Rock and Haram al-Sharif, but a little family drama (everyone was so tired, so some meltdowns are to be expected, and actually happened far less often…

Yad Vashem is Israel’s official museum and memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. I really wanted to go, but I really didn’t want to go–if you know what I mean. I knew it was going to be a hard visit, even with no family or religious connection to the Holocaust. As much as I…

I warned the kids that I wanted to take a bunch of family pictures at the Jerusalem Center on Shabbat–so we left Mesaveret Zion ninety minutes before church starts. The Jerusalem Center grounds open 30 minutes before sacrament meeting and close 30 minutes after church ends, and our journeys to church had not been smooth…

All of a sudden we only have a few days left! And I’m so sad and happy all at once–we are super tired, and there really isn’t any place like home. On Friday, we decided to explore a lesser-known church, St. Peter in Gallicantu, and see the Upper Room and visit the Garden of Gethsemane…

One of the hardest things tour guide Brad and tour guide Keryn ran into was the odd hours of every site. For some reason, I was expecting places like churches to be open from, say, 9-5, or maybe 9-4, or something along those lines. And I was expecting the museums to be open till, say,…

After the cave, I drove us all back to our apartment and parked the van (and was very proud of myself doing so, parallel parking not being a strong talent of mine) (okay, it wasn’t quite parallel parking, but sort of pulling into the curb and then shimmying back and forth a bit). Most everyone…

On Thursday morning, some of us slept in (LaDonna and Gee), one of us went to tour the Knesset (the Israeli seat of government, like the Capitol Building in DC) (Bradley), and the rest of us (Eva, Zee, Em, Hebs, Yummy, Keryn) went to the Stalactite Cave. This is the cave that Bradley took Zee,…

We’ve been trying to make it to the Shephelah (the “lowlands” or the Judean foothills) since our third week, but circumstances have kept interfering with this. So on Wednesday, we started bright and early to go see the Valley of Elah (David and Goliath), Tel Lachish, and Beit Guvrin National Park. Eva chose to stay…