At last, a day without an alarm. Well kind of. When we finally surfaced, we realised that we only had 10 minutes left to get to breakfast. Now given the price of food in Israel, and that breakfast is where we get our lunch for the day, it would have been a financial disaster to miss the free buffet, so we still had a frantic start to the morning.
For our free day, we decided that we didn't want anything remotely historical or educational. If we had to remember another date, we'd go spare. So we googled "Jerusalem" and "excitement" and "entertainment" and came up with an antegooglewhackblatt. (That's the term when you search google and get no results. It's hard to do - just try it) So giving up on that thought, we started with a wander through the Old City market to pick up a couple of souvenirs. Came across a very noisy procession of about 100 people singling and dancing and blowing rams horns, as they escorted a young jewish boy through the city to the wailing wall to celebrate his Bah Mitzvah. He looked a bit embarrassed, but the guy directing the proceedings involved all of the tourists along the way, including starting an international cheering contest for him, so he certainly got his money's worth.
After a bite to eat, we took a trip on the light rail service, which uses the same light rail trams that Melbourne does, not with any specific destination in mind, but rather to see the suburbs. It served that purpose for us, but also had another function in that it was built along the route of the old border post 1948 between the jewish Palestine/Israel and the west bank territory controlled by Jordan. It was effectively the country's border which cut, a bit like Berlin, down the middle of streets, and meant that Israel had no access to the Old City. Turns out that this why our hotel and the two others next door are so new. They were built in Jordanian territory that the Israelis reclaimed in the Six Day War.
Returned to our hotel, claimed our baggage, and waited for our taxi to the airport to arrive. Played the game that we learned too late on this trip. Most big tour buses have free wi-fi on board, so if you sit close enough to the buses at lunch stops you can hitch a free ride. Given that they park outside our hotel .....
The taxi driver was really obliging and didn't seem to mind dropping us off at the funky Sadot Airport rather than the airport itself - probably easier for him too, though he didn't know it existed. Checked in, and then visited the kosher McDonalds conveniently situated in the mall over which the hotel is situated, where all milk products like shakes and flurries are served at one end of the counter and the burgers are served at the other end. If you want a shake with your burger, you have to order at two different cash registers, though your server just walks to the other end to keep serving you.
Spent the remainder of the evening re-organising our luggage for the four flights ahead to get us home.
The web's original travel blog
