Now that we're all up to speed on the emails, let's tackle today.

In the morning we went to the Holy Lands Museum.  The museum followed the history of the "holy lands" (modern day Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran...etc) from the beginning of recorded history to whenever I got bored and left the exhibit- I'm guessing it went slightly past ancient Egypt.  I really did enjoy the museum, the exhibits were interesting and the artifacts we nice, but at a certain point my attention span got the better of me.  One of my favorite parts of archeology museums is wondering about the lives of the people who's work is represented in the cases.  Although I'd love to know why that individual made that specific pot or bowl, what I'm really interested in is the mundane details of his or her daily life.  Did she like music?  Did he have kids?  What did he do for fun?  Was she close to her siblings?  These are the things that we likely won't find out from the artifacts, but probably mattered a lot more to the creator than any clay pot ever did.  After I finished with the exhibits, I waited in the lobby of the museum and discussed the merits of grilled cheese- a food that Israel seems to be sadly missing.

After lunch and a quick break back at the hotel, we went to the Islamic art center.  The Islamic art center was filled with intricate vases, rugs and tiles- a really impressive array of art.  As a general pattern on the trip, we've been staying museums about an hour longer than most people would like, so with this in mind (we had over two hours for about 7 rooms) we created a game through the museum.  As we walked through the museum we decorated our imaginary houses with painted tiles, plush rugs, and wall mounted weapons- the game helped pass the time, but we still ended up with about a 45 minute surplus at the end.  The final exhibit, although unrelated to Islamic art, was my favorite.  The museum had a dark exhibit filled with clocks and watches.  The exhibit detailed the mechanics and origin of each clock, which excited the engineer in me to no end.  There were two clocks that especially impressed me, there was a clock that relied on a cylinder rolling down and inclined plane, and another clock that used small metal balls on inclined planes to keep track of seconds.

This evening, we were allowed to get dinner on our own and then go shopping at Ben Yehuda street.  I went to a spaghetti restaurant with Rachel, Gina, and Kester.  The food was delicious and we even go dessert!  After the restaurant we wandered around town, going in and out of shops, until eventually taking a taxi home around 10pm.